SBIR Phase I: Point of Care Metabolic Measurement

This SBIR Phase I project will overcome key technical challenges to develop new materials to enable a point of care sensor for whole blood biomarker monitoring for markers with existing CPT codes. Ultimately this, sensor will be used to improve treatment and quality of life for diseased persons of all ages. It will be used at the point of care as a rapid, diagnostic for newborn screening (~3.9 million babies born annually in the U.S.) and as a daily monitoring system for people living with specific diseases (~600,000 people in the U.S.). Ultimately, manufacturing of consumable, single use sensors and sensor readers will create new jobs in the United States. The technical innovation lies in 1) the ability to increase sensor specificity, by eliminating signals from interferents, 2) increasing sensor sensitivity by improving the sensing material, and 3) enabling measurement directly from whole blood, instead of separated plasma. Current clinically used measurements, which rely on plasma separated from whole blood, suffer from inaccurate results from pre-analytical variability in sample handling. The goals of this work are 1) to chemically modify materials to create new materials capable of eliminating blood components that could confound the sensor, 2) increase the sensing material surface area for faster sensor response, and 3) to analytically validate the performance of the sensor with whole blood as compared to commercially available methods. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.