Highly-Sensitive Point-of-Care Diagnostics & Disease Monitoring

Description

This technology is a novel, highly-sensitive platform to diagnose and monitor diseases in real time at a doctor’s office. Many chronic diseases like cancer and IBD do not have initial screening tests and solely rely on invasive, uncomfortable and time-consuming procedures (like biopsies and colonoscopies). Having a less invasive screening test would assist in reducing the number of patients who would need more invasive testing, and in some cases, it may eliminate the need for additional, more expensive and burdensome procedures.

To that end, this infrared spectroscopy system enables the early detection of unique biochemical fingerprints (or biomarkers) associated with different disease states. In turn, this system may enable early diagnosis, disease progression monitoring, therapeutic efficacy assessment and research across varied medical fields such as immunology, inflammatory diseases, and oncology. Among many patient groups who would benefit, this will be especially important for pediatric or other patients who cannot withstand invasive testing.

Benefits

Minimally or Non-Invasive – requires only small amounts of biological samples (e.g., saliva, serum, etc.), potentially reducing reliance on invasive procedures like biopsies or colonoscopies
Rapid and Sensitive – detects biochemical changes at molecular level, enabling early detection of disease states for quick treatment response decisions
Flexible – broad applicability across multiple diseases, including inflammatory diseases (e.g. colitis, IBD) and cancerous conditions (e.g. oral, skin, blood cancers)

Applications

Point-of-care diagnostic devices and clinical laboratories
Early detection, diagnosis and monitoring of inflammatory bowel diseases such as colitis and IBD
Screening and diagnosis of cancers such as melanoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and oral cancers
Identification and monitoring of cellular activation states in immunological research
Potential for personalized monitoring of chemotherapeutic treatment responses
Biomedical research and pharmaceutical development focused on biomarker discovery
Non-invasive health screening tools in hospitals and outpatient settings

Patent Status

Publications

Early detection of cell activation events by means of attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy | Applied Physics Letters | AIP Publishing

Minimally invasive screening for colitis using attenuated total internal reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy - PMC

ATR-FTIR spectral discrimination between normal and tumorous mouse models of lymphoma and melanoma from serum samples - PubMed

Spectral biomarker studies for tracking colitis progression in dextran sodium sulphate treated mouse sera using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy

Protein secondary structure analysis of dried blood serum using infrared spectroscopy to identify markers for colitis screening - PubMed

Optimizing infrared spectral discrimination to enhance disease diagnostics: monitoring the signatures of inflammatory bowel diseases with anti-TNFα therapy - PMC

Protein Conformational Changes in Breast Cancer Sera Using Infrared Spectroscopic Analysis - PubMed

Infrared spectrometric biomarkers for ulcerative colitis screening using human serum samples - PubMed

Longitudinal analysis of molecular alteration in serum samples of dextran sodium sulfate-induced colitis mice by using infrared spectroscopy - ScienceDirect