NanoMedicine Program

NANO TO GLOBAL DIAGNOSTICS PROGRAM:
DEVELOPMENT AND OF MICROCHIP-BASED SENSORS FOR DETECTION AND DIAGNOSIS OF EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Infectious diseases remain the leading killers of human beings worldwide, and function to destabilize societies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In its 2001 report, "Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Global to the Local Perspective," the Institute of Medicine identified the health, financial, geopolitical and social impact of emerging infections on American society. Old diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis, recent scourges including HIV/AIDS, and emerging infections such as hantavirus and West Nile virus have an increasing impact on the health and well-being of Americans. In addition to these pathogens, antibiotic resistance has also emerged as a major problem in hospitals and clinics. More recently, agents of bio-terror, including anthrax, smallpox, and tularemia, have forced our society to rethink health care delivery, public health policies and vaccine strategies, opening up a new field of bio-defense.

Our Texas-centered program targets the development, testing and deployment of a powerful chip-based technology suitable for the early detection and monitoring of infectious diseases. Customized lab-on-a-chip systems developed at The University of Texas may quickly find an essential role in point-of-care diagnostics in clinics and hospitals. The benefits of rapid infectious diseases diagnostics are a decrease in health care costs, improvement in rapid public health responses to disease outbreaks, and a reduction in the use of unnecessary antibiotics. In addition to the revolutionary and evolutionary benefits that can be expected for commercial health care, it is clear that these same technologies can be utilized in humanitarian settings. Indeed, UT-Harvard-MGH activities have led to the successful completion of highly promising human trials for microchip-based HIV monitoring systems in Boston hospital settings as well as in an HIV reference laboratory in Botswana, Africa. This program secured an award from the Gates Foundation for an accelerated development effort. A new company called LabNow (Austin, Texas) has been launched to translate these scientific discoveries into practical, affordable and accessible medical devices that can help with a number of important global health care issues. For more information on these global health care activities, see the news section.

New nano-materials and nano-device concepts are combined in this important program to complete diagnostic assays that can operate at the point-of-care with reduced cost. In spite of their ultra-small small size and inexpensive cost, these now proven micro-sensor systems exhibit excellent performance characteristics and compare favorably to their modern, expensive counterparts. These activities have led to the development of methods suitable for the creation of chemically tailored nano-pockets that are localized in the interior regions of bead "micro-reactors." Tailored antibody and molecular reagents line these novel structures to create a series of miniaturized reaction vessels. These systems can be used to create integrated separation, collection and detection ensembles that serve as the basis for eliminating their laboratory-confined counterparts. The beads are tailored to collect and report the presence of specific organisms and diseases. Methods traditionally used in the microelectronics industry to generate electronic devices have been adapted for the creation of these novel bio-nano devices.