Advanced Development for Defense Science and Technology

The potential for a biowarfare attack looms large in today’s society as terrorist organizations become more sophisticated in their technological means, putting our military, first responders and citizens at high risk. There are a myriad of bacterial and viral pathogens that are well suited for use as biowarfare agents. An ability to detect these agents in an ultra-rapid, sensitive, robust and economical fashion is of vital importance to ensure the safety of our military, first responders and civilians. Although diagnostic systems exist that are able to detect these agents, they are lacking the portability, speed, sensitivity, or robustness to be of real-time use in the field. We propose to develop a field deployable handheld detection device that can be used by the military and first responders to simultaneously detect the presence of multiple biothreat pathogens by using an ultra-rapid and sensitive target amplification approach coupled to a highly multiplexed solid surface probe array detection technology. This is a robust approach that will provide near real-time detection and identification of multiple pathogenic agents in less than 10 minutes using initially prepared nucleic acid or endospores as a target for amplification, even in the presence of environmental contaminants and near-neighbor clutter.