Novel medical device for treatment of fungal nail infection

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal continues the proof-of-concept development and testing of a novel, safe, and effective treatment device for onychomycosis (nail fungal infection). While onychomycosis is considered a cosmetic problem, theinfected nail also becomes a persistent reservoir for infectious microbes that could lead to other significant medical problems. Over 35 million Americans suffer from onychomycosis, which carries a direct cost of over 4 billion in the US healthcare system. The device under development would offer patients and doctors a reliable method to treat nail fungal infections without toxic side effects unlike current oral medications that may cause liver damage, or topical creams and lasers that have low or unprovenefficacy. In this project, we will develop a medical device prototype based on our patent pending technology to prove the feasibility of killing fungal infections through a human nail. Our critical success metric for this Phase I project is demonstra