McDevitt Saliva Diagnostics / Oral Fluid Diagnostics Research Program

Saliva is an important diagnostic fluid that has the potential to be used for the detection of essential biomarkers for both oral and systemic diseases. Unfortunately, the current lack of reliable detection methods for measurement of important analytes within this complex biomatrix has hindered progress in salivary diagnostics. To help remove this barrier, recent promising activities have been initiated in the area related to microfluidic-based lab-on-a-chip (LOC) systems. While several miniaturized platforms are being developed now, few of these systems have evolved to the point where important protein biomarkers can be measured over the physiological range using real oral diagnostic fluid samples.

Towards this essential goal, the team of investigators from UT have developed and carefully documented an integration biochip assay system that is suitable for measurement of panels of important inflammation markers (CRP, TNF-alpha, IL-6) in saliva. This newly fashioned ultra-sensitive method has been used to extend oral fluid-based diagnostics to significantly lower CRP levels allowing for the first comparison of CRP levels between healthy, periodontitis and edentulous patients. The miniaturized system correlates nicely with established macroscopic gold standard methods. The McDevitt lab is now taking the next steps to combine these functional components and associated methodologies to create a flexible platform that may be used to promote and expand the field of salivary diagnostics.

Our program targets the development of portable devices that can be used to complete salivary diagnostic tests. The program will evolve with important biochip, analyzer and immunoassay development milestones to be completed in the next two years. First, integrated biochips and analyzers will be developed and tested. These alpha prototypes will be used to define specifications for more final systems. Fully developed biochips and analyzer suitable to serve as beta prototypes will be fashioned. These highly functional portable systems will be used to complete pre-clinical testing and validation. Salivary biomarker fingerprints that our team has already defined will be used to 1) discriminate stages of periodontitis and 2) identify risk for future cardiac events in coronary artery disease patients.