I-Corps: Glucose meters for the detection of pathogens

毒素、病毒和细菌的早期和快速检测对对策非常重要。例如，2009年的“猪流感”流感毒株传播迅速，并在最初爆发的几周内感染了200多个国家的人。在这种情况下，即时诊断对于控制感染的传播非常有用。快速生物传感器应满足被广泛接受的ASSURED（这代表价格合理，选择性，敏感，用户友好，快速和强大，设备免费和可交付给最终用户）标准。这个项目的重点是为一些传染因子开发可靠的诊断方法，特别强调流感病毒，因为流感病毒传播迅速，每年导致数百万人感染和死亡。这个想法是改变个人血糖仪的用途，这种血糖仪已经被全世界的糖尿病患者用来监测血糖水平，以检测流感病毒和其他病原体。预计这些新的诊断方法将直接造福社会，因为这些生物传感器可用于准确识别受感染的患者，以治疗他们并控制疾病的传播。长期目标是开发一种独特的概念，将血糖仪与合成小分子结合使用，以检测传染性病原体。该项目的具体目标是检测流感病毒，一种高度传染性的呼吸道病原体，通过关注其表面酶，神经氨酸酶（NA），从哺乳动物细胞表面切割末端唾液酸。将合成唾液酸-葡萄糖偶联物暴露于NA或流感病毒可导致葡萄糖释放，可使用改进型血糖仪测量。由于血糖仪广泛可用且无处不在，并且主要用于测试血糖，现在可以重新校准以测试流感患者的鼻腔或喉咙拭子。这一战略具有广泛的范围，因为它有可能用于检测其他传染原或人类疾病。将这一基本发现转化为临床的下一个技术步骤是优化条件以缩短分析时间，同时保持包括选择性和灵敏度在内的确定标准，并使用金标准实验室技术（如细胞培养和PCR）验证结果。除了技术任务，这个项目的目标是满足潜在客户，考虑他们的需求，探索新产品/市场，并制定战略，以满足这些目标。

Early and rapid detection of toxins, viruses and bacteria is very important for countermeasures. For example, the 2009 "swine flu" influenza strain spread rapidly and infected people in over 200 countries within weeks of the initial outbreak. Point of care diagnostics are very useful in such situations to control the spread of infection. Rapid biosensors should satisfy the ASSURED (which stands for Affordable, Selective, Sensitive, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, equipment-free and Deliverable to endusers) criteria for wide acceptance. This project focuses on the development of ASSURED diagnostics for a number of infectious agents, with specific emphasis on influenza viruses because influenza viruses spread rapidly and lead to millions of infections and deaths every year. The idea is to repurpose personal glucose meters that are already used by diabetic patients worldwide to monitor glucose levels to detect influenza viruses and other pathogens. It is anticipated that these new diagnostics would directly benefit society since these biosensors can be used to accurately identify infected patients to treat them and control the spread of disease. The long term goals are to develop an unique concept that uses glucose meters in conjunction with synthetic small molecules to detect infectious agents. The specific goal of this project is to detect influenza virus, a highly transmissible respiratory pathogen by focusing on its surface enzyme, Neuraminidase (NA), that cleaves terminal sialic acids from the surface of mammalian cells. Exposure of a synthetic sialic acid-glucose conjugate to NA or influenza viruses leads to glucose release, which can be measured using a repurposed glucose meter. Since glucose meters are widely available and are ubiquitous and have been used primarily to test blood glucose, now can be recalibrated to test nasal or throat swabs from sick patients for influenza. This strategy has broad scope since it could potentially be used to detect other infectious agents or human disorders. The next technical steps towards the translation of this basic discovery to the clinic is to optimize conditions to improve analysis time, while maintaining the ASSURED criteria that include selectivity and sensitivity and validate the results with gold standard laboratory techniques such as cell culture and PCR. In addition to the technical tasks, the goal of this project is to meet potential customers, consider their requirements, explore new products/market and develop strategies to meet those goals.