Ambient Preservation of Clinical Analytes

The proposed research is in response to the In-flight Biological Sample Preservation and Analysis topic and offers a non-invasive, proven, space and cost and time effective approach to biological sample collection and preservation. Our proposal is to collect capillary whole blood from the fingertip in addition to urine samples, and to store these samples as dried spots on a custom wick-matrix. The process of sample collection is minimally invasive to non-invasive, and samples can be stored efficiently at ambient temperatures during space flight. A wide array of blood analytes can already be determined from these samples, but in addition, we propose to develop and validate further assays that meet the specific objectives of NASA, its scientists and clinicians.