I-Corps: Development of a Biosensor Microchip for the Detection of Cancer Cells at the Point-of-Care

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This I-Corps team is geared towards the development of a simple portable microchip device that will be able to detect cancer cells from blood and/or tissue samples. This microchip might be used in remote places, low-income households, and at point-of-care such as doctors' offices, medical centers, laboratories, pharmacies, or at home. The low cost and simple USB device works on detecting telomerase, an enzyme over expressed in a variety of cancer cells. Since cancer is one of the most common causes of death, the availability of a simple and low cost portable microchip device will help on the accessibility of preventive care and cancer detection at early stages for its proper treatment. The goal of this project is to have this innovative technology available at pharmacies for its use at point-of-care and households. This microchip will be developed with carbon electrodes and polymer substrates to lower its costs and make it more cost effective to the community. This development includes flexibility, robustness, and response time.The customers who will benefit the most from the proposed innovation are those who live far from a hospital, do not travel well due to health related issues, and do not have a strong healthcare plan or want/need to know quickly about the possibility of having cancer. During the I-Corps program, the team intends to conduct customer discovery to assess the commercial viability of the proposed device. If commercially viable, the proposed cancer biosensor will contribute to new scientific findings and engineering aspects in bio-sensing technology. The resultant device will also provide a non-invasive, fast, and accurate method to detect cancer for preclinical diagnosis. In addition, the research based on the microchip biosensors will improve a range of equivalent studies that use similar systems and biomarkers.