Aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is a potential major route for the spread of COVID-19 disease. Yet current safety guidelines only address contact and near-contact transmission. Without any measures in place to adequately prevent airborne SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission, an air monitoring system is needed. The current state-of-the-art uses air samplers and reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in a multi-step process performed at two sites that takes over 8 hours to complete, making this method ineffective for prevention. The ability to rapidly detect and quantify airborne SARS-CoV-2 and receive real-time results at the point of presentation is required to quickly determine the viral exposure level and adequately manage the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by aerosol transmission.
The focus of this project is to design and develop a real-time air sensing system to monitor SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols.
Funded by NIH
SARS-CoV-2
Ovarian cancer
An estimated 1 out of 75 women will get ovarian cancer in their lifetime. There is currently no screening test for ovarian cancer that will detect the disease early. By the time most women are diagnosed, they have an advanced stage of the disease where the five-year survival rate is as low as 17%. Greater than 90% of epithelial ovarian cancers are associated with sporadic mutations.
If there was a test that could detect these biomarkers in high-risk populations during the early stages of the disease, then the 5-year survival rate could increase to over 90%. However, mutations in early stages are rare and beyond the detection limits of current technologies.
The focus of this project is to enable a new ultra-sensitive technology as a routine point-of-care test for rare mutations that are associated with ovarian cancer. If used by GPs/OB-GYNs to screen high-risk populations for early detection of ovarian cancer, survival rates could increase to over 90%.
Funded by NCI.
Sepsis
In the U.S. more than 1 million people are struck by severe sepsis, which is fatal in approximately 28% - 50% of people. Sepsis infections occur in 10% of hospitalized patients, costing more than $24 billion annually and contributing up to 52% of hospital deaths in the U.S. The high incidence of sepsis mortality is directly associated with a limited window of time in which to initiate effective antimicrobial therapy. It is estimated that every hour delay in administering appropriate antibiotics results in an associated 6% rise in mortality rate in sepsis patients.
Current tests take 5 hours to several days for a result. In an attempt to compensate for the long diagnostic turnaround times, broad-spectrum antimicrobials are used before the causative infectious agents are identified, increasing the risk of antimicrobial drug resistance. Currently, a rapid and selective screening test for sepsis does not exist. The focus of this project is to enable a technology that can deliver sepsis pathogen identification in under 10 minutes, cost-effectively to decrease sepsis mortality, morbidity, and length of hospital stay.
Funded by NIAID.
Childhood tuberculosis
Greater than 95% of tuberculosis (TB) deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, where the high incidence of childhood TB mortality is directly associated with the TB diagnosis-treatment gap in local communities. To effectively treat and stop the spread of childhood TB in these developing regions, there is a critical need for a rapid and cost-effective point-of-care TB test for children that does not exist today.
Current TB tests require sputum specimens, which are difficult to obtain from infants and young children in community settings. Existing TB test are also not sensitive enough to detect the small number of bacteria in the paucibacillary form of the disease that is typically found in infected childhood specimens.
The focus of this project is to develop a rapid and cost-effective point-of-care test to enable the early detection of TB in non-sputum samples, which are more readily accessible from infants and children. By screening, monitoring, and treating TB in local community healthcare settings, the transmission of childhood TB can be stopped.
Funded by NICHD.