A Program with Purpose

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-based 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, recent UT-Harvard-MGH collaborative 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 joint UT-MGH program secured funding from the Gates Foundation for an accelerated development effort (UT subcontract award flowed through MGH).