SBIR Phase II: Electronic Allergy Diagnostics: Photo-Immobilization as a General Strategy for Attaching Structurally and Compositionally Diverse Ligands onto a Single Support

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to create better diagnostic testing for drug, food, and environmental allergies. If successful, it would be transformative in the clinical diagnosis of allergy diseases by enabling rapid evaluation at the doctor?s office in a format that is significantly preferable to skin-prick or challenge testing. The broader impacts of this research are the development of next generation diagnostic devices. These devices will enable the diagnosis of many different conditions and diseases with just a small drop of blood, right in a doctor?s office. Disease diagnosis from blood often requires that the blood sample, typically one or more test tubes full of blood, be taken from a vein in a patient?s arm and sent to a clinical laboratory. This is uncomfortable for the patient, requires them to wait days for results, is expensive, and is less safe than the approach being developed by Virogenomics because a large amount of blood that must be transported and handled. The Virogenomics platform will use just a drop of blood and will provide results while the patient is still in the doctor?s office. This diagnostic test works similar to the blood-glucose monitors diabetics use to monitor their blood sugar but is much more flexible in regards to the types of tests that can be done. In addition to allergy diagnosis, the proposed diagnostic platform would have application in many other fields that affect our health, such as diagnostics for autoimmune diseases, infectious disease and cancer.