"PROSPER is a multidisciplinary project covering the emerging fields of photonics, bio-chemistry and endoscopy, targeting to contribute to the development of a new class of biochemical optical sensors that would significantly improve the healthcare of the future.PROSPER will address this objective through the demonstration of biosensors based on a functionalized polymer optical fibre (POF) in which specially-designed refractive-index gratings have been written. Immobilised biomolecular receptors on the grafted fibre surface will allow label-free recognition through the monitoring of wavelength shifts in the grating spectral response. Such biosensors are predicted to exhibit a surrounding refractive index detection limit of 10-6 in real time, which is classical for biodetection. Although generic and able to work in various areas such as environmental monitoring, food analysis, agriculture or security, the proposed biosensors will be targeted for medical diagnostics where they present the most ground-breaking nature. Indeed, unlike bulk structures, they require reduced reaction volumes for ex-vivo measurements and present the advantageous possibility of assaying several parameters simultaneously (e.g. several cancer-associated antigens in one sample). As a result, statistical analysis of these parameters can potentially increase the reliability and reduce the measurement uncertainty of a diagnostic over single-parameter assays. More importantly, the proposed biosensors have the unique potential to be used in-vivo in an endoscope (for this reason POFs are privileged over silica), which would considerably improve the diagnostic. The ultimate target of PROSPER is thus to demonstrate the feasibility of diagnostics outside of laboratory settings. A final prototype consisting of a packaged polymer biosensor will be validated."