SBIR Phase I: Novel Biosensor for Monitoring of Theophylline using Personal Glucose Meter

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop a new technology to utilize ubiquitous personal glucose meters (PGMs) for inexpensive and convenient at-home tests of the drug theophylline. Theophylline has been widely used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. It has a narrow effective range and adverse side effects when overdosed, thus frequent test of plasma theophylline are recommended for patients using this drug. The technology in this project converts plasma theophylline into glucose quantitatively by a theophylline-triggered enzymatic reaction, so theophylline is monitored through glucose detection by inexpensive and convenient PGMs. The broader commercial impacts of this research are more convenience and lower costs for therapeutic drug monitoring. In the era of personalized medicine, the dosage of a drug is as important as the drug itself. Many other drugs are similar to theophylline in terms of narrow effective ranges and adverse side effects when overdosed. Currently, testing levels for these types of drugs requires hospital visits and blood draws, which are inconvenient, time consuming and costly. The proposed innovation here can also be translated to measure other drugs' concentrations more simply, quickly and cheaply. The innovation proposed here can be used for drug monitoring in general which will have great impact on the quality and affordability of healthcare worldwide.