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Grand Challenges and Opportunities in Biophotonics

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Bahman Anvari at University of California, Riverside
Bahman Anvari
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Grand Challenges and Opportunities
in Biophotonics
Bahman Anvari *
Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, United States
Keywords: biology, environment, light, lasers, microscopy, medicine, optical imaging, therapeutics
Biophotonics is the scientificfield at the interface of life and light sciences. It encompasses the use of
light as the energy source that enables fundamental studies and application developments in
biological, pharmaceutical, environmental and agricultural sciences, and medicine. While the
term is contemporary, some of the earliest recorded history of the field probably dates back to
the 17th century with the first microbial observations by Antony van Leeuwenhoek using single
lenses (Ford, 1985). In 1903, The Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Niels Ryber
Finsen “in recognition of his contribution to the treatment of diseases, especially lupus vulgaris, with
concentrated light radiation, whereby he has opened a new avenue for medical science”
1
. Fast
forward to 21st century where The Noble Prize in Chemistry was awarded “for the discovery and
development of the green fluorescent protein”
2
in 2008, and “for the development of super-resolved
fluorescence microscopy”
3
in 2014. The Noble Prize in Physics in 2018 was partly awarded to Arthur
Ashkin “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems”
4
.
At the most fundamental level, the nature of the interaction of light with biological and organic
matters provides the basis for both basic and translational work in biophotonics. These interactions
involve the absorption and scattering of photons, and have led to the development of diverse
technologies including various types of optical spectroscopy methods such as UV-VIS-IR
spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and Raman scattering;
microscopy methods including confocal and multiphoton, fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM),
and nanoscale optical microscopy (Hermann and Gordon, 2018); and clinical diagnostic and
imaging technologies such as pulse oximetry, optical coherence tomography (OCT) (Huang
et al., 1991), and fluorescence-guided surgery (Landau et al., 2016).
On the therapeutic side, Leon Goldman pioneered the use of lasers in dermatology (Goldman
et al., 1963). Soon after, clinical applications of lasers were extended to ophthalmology for treatment
of diabetic retinopathy (L’Esperance, 1969) and photodynamic therapy, and more recently to
photoimmunotherapy (Kobayashi and Choyke, 2019;Xu et al., 2020). Optical neuromodulation
including optogenetics and non-genetic photostimulation methods for optical manipulation of
cellular and sub-cellular activities have recently emerged (Boyden et al., 2005;Jiang et al., 2019).
Despite these remarkable achievements and tremendous contributions to life sciences and
medicine, there are significant challenges and yet exciting opportunities in biophotonics.
Inherently, depth of optical penetration in biological materials remains limited to a few cm.
Furthermore, increased optical penetration depth is accompanied by decreased spatial resolution.
Methodologies that can enable increased penetration depth and spatial resolution would have great
impact in photo-therapeutics and optical imaging applications. In vivo measurements of optical
Edited and reviewed by:
Marco Peccianti,
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
*Correspondence:
Bahman Anvari
anvarib@ucr.edu
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Biophotonics,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Photonics
Received: 01 June 2021
Accepted: 11 June 2021
Published: 22 June 2021
Citation:
Anvari B (2021) Grand Challenges and
Opportunities in Biophotonics.
Front. Photonics 2:719131.
doi: 10.3389/fphot.2021.719131
1
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1903 [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1903/
summary/.
2
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008 [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2008/summary/.
3
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2014/summary/.
4
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/summary/.
Frontiers in Photonics | www.frontiersin.org June 2021 | Volume 2 | Article 7191311
SPECIALTY GRAND CHALLENGE
published: 22 June 2021
doi: 10.3389/fphot.2021.719131
properties can lead to development of real time diagnostics,
guided-therapies and evaluation of therapeutic interventions.
Multiplexed molecular sensing and development of new
probes that can provide high sensitivity and specificity present
another arena for further developments. Compact and
miniatured devices, and wearable and implantable sensors
would be of immense value for use at home, and at point-of-
care and resource-limited settings. The current COVID-19
pandemic illustrates the need for such practical, inexpensive,
and easy-to-use devices that can provide rapid and accurate
diagnostics.
Light-based theranostic technologies integrated with
molecular and genomic profiling would provide capabilities for
combined sensing/diagnostics/imaging and therapeutics on
personalized basis. Photonic technologies will have important
roles in high throughput drug screening, in vivo tracking of drugs
biodistribution, and mediating localized and controlled-release of
drugs. A better understanding of the immune response and the
role of various inflammatory cells and signaling biomolecules to
light can lead to development of more effective phototherapeutic
methods.
The progress in artificial intelligence, including machine
learning, data mining, big data analysis, and computational
power provide opportunities for closer interactions and
integrations with biophotonics toward automated feature and
pattern identifications that may otherwise not be possible. Such
interactions will also be increasingly useful for applications in
environmental monitoring including the assessment of climate
change and marine life, and in food and agricultural monitoring
for pathogens and toxins detections as well as soil and vegetation
evaluation. These examples highlight the multidisciplinary nature
of biophotonics and the opportunities for collaborations among
scientists with various expertise, as well as the need for
development of educational curricula that emphasize multiple
disciplines to train the future generations of scientists working in
this field.
The immense capabilities of biophotonics have been
recognized by specific government agencies to support
biophotonics research. A particular example is the
Biophotonics Program at United States National Science
Foundation whose goal is “to explore the research frontiers in
photonics principles, engineering and technology that are
relevant for critical problems in fields of medicine, biology and
biotechnology.”Funding through appropriate governmental
agencies will be needed to tackle these grand challenges and
ultimately impact human health and the environment on our
planet. The field of biophotonics continues to grow and embraces
new interested scientists.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
has approved it for publication.
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Conflict of Interest: The author declares that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a
potential conflict of interest.
Copyright © 2021 Anvari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or
reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the
copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is
cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or
reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Frontiers in Photonics | www.frontiersin.org June 2021 | Volume 2 | Article 7191312
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Millisecond-timescale, Genetically Targeted Optical Control of Neural Activity
  • Jan 2005
  • 1263
  • Boyden