I-Corps: High Efficiency Rapid Magnetic Erythrocyte Separator

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使诊断血液测试的权力下放。现有的医疗点诊所仅限于有限的诊断能力，因为它们目前没有进行血浆分离的简单方法。高效快速磁性红细胞分离机(H.E.R.M.E.S)提供了一种高效的解决方案，可以满足医疗现场环境中的样本处理需求，其商业化将使现有的诊断测试能够从传统实验室转移到更方便的临床环境中。获得快速样品处理能力还将确保保持样品的完整性，并减少因样品储存不佳而可能导致的错误诊断的发生率。此外，H.E.R.M.E.S非常适合集成到资源有限的医疗保健基础设施中，因为它可以提供低成本的样本处理能力。成功的部署将增加检测服务的可获得性，并有可能使护理点诊所占据更大比例的血液检测市场。i-Corps项目探索了一种执行血浆分离的转换方法的商业潜力。H.E.R.M.E.S使用基于磁珠的分离，在短时间内获得不含红细胞的血浆。H.E.R.M.E.S是一个低成本的独立平台，具有提高现有血液诊断测试的测试效率和转换能力的潜力。H.E.R.M.E.S将解决缺乏低成本和高效的样本处理技术的问题；这是阻碍现有护理点诊所提供内部血液检测服务的障碍。目前的实验表明，H.E.R.M.E.S的性能类似于离心机(接近100%的血浆纯度)，时间和成本只有离心机的一小部分(处理时间为2分钟，每次测试不到2美元)。这项基础研究补充了正在进行的开发现场医疗技术以进行现场诊断测试的工作。该技术使用容易获得的廉价原材料，工艺流程已被设计为确保半自主操作？表明有利的扩大潜力的关键因素。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to enable the decentralization of diagnostic blood testing. Existing point-of-care clinics are limited to a narrow range of diagnostic capabilities as they currently do not possess simple methods to perform blood-plasma separation. High Efficiency Rapid Magnetic Erythrocyte Separator (H.E.R.M.E.S) offers a highly efficient solution to meet the needs of sample processing in point-of-care environments and its commercialization will enable the translation of existing diagnostic tests from traditional labs to more accessible clinical settings. Access to rapid sample processing capabilities will also ensure retention of sample integrity and reduce the incidences of inaccurate diagnosis that may result from poor sample storage. Further, H.E.R.M.E.S is highly suitable to integrate into the healthcare infrastructure of resource-limited settings as it can provide low-cost sample processing capabilities. Successful deployment will result in an increased accessibility to testing services and will potentially allow point-of-care clinics to capture a greater percentage of the blood-testing marketThis I-Corps project explores the commercial potential of a translational method to perform blood-plasma separation. H.E.R.M.E.S uses magnetic bead-based separation to obtain plasma free of red blood cells in a short amount of time. H.E.R.M.E.S is a low-cost and standalone platform that has the potential to augment the testing efficiency and translational ability of existing blood-based diagnostic tests. H.E.R.M.E.S will address the lack of availability of low-cost and efficient sample processing technologies; a barrier that prevents existing point-of-care clinics from offering in-house blood testing services. Current experiments show that H.E.R.M.E.S offers performance similar to that of a centrifuge (near 100% plasma purity) at a fraction of the time and cost (process time of 2 minutes at less than $2 per test). The underlying research complements ongoing work in developing point-of-care medical technologies to perform diagnostic testing in the field. The technology utilizes inexpensive raw materials that are readily available, and the process flow has been designed to ensure semi-autonomous operation ? key factors that indicate favorable scale-up potential.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.