I-Corps: Hollow Metal Nanoparticles: Improving the Sensitivity of Lateral Flow Assays

I-Corps：空心金属纳米颗粒：提高侧向层析检测的灵敏度

• 批准号: 1906711
• 负责人: Jin Zhang
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Cruz
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-01 至 2021-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1906711&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Hollow; Metal; Nanoparticles; Improving

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to enable new and improved lateral flow assays (LFAs) through the development of hollow metal nanoparticles as highly sensitive color labels. LFAs are commonly used in environmental monitoring, food safety testing, and point-of-care clinical diagnostics (the most common example is the home pregnancy test). The company?s core technology will improve the performance of the active component in LFA devices, translating to faster and more accurate diagnoses, more timely treatment regimens, and decreased health care costs for patients and providers worldwide. These advantages should prove especially important in resource-constrained settings where access to established laboratories equipped with expensive instrumentation is cost- or time-prohibitive. Thus, the improvement and expansion of rapid, affordable, LFA point-of-care diagnostic platforms represent a critical need and will have broad impacts in public health on a global scale. Moreover, with the growing adoption of nanotechnology throughout industry, there is rapidly increasing demand for intentionally designed nanostructures in a wide range of applications ranging from chemical catalysis to optoelectronics. Securing a foothold in the LFA industry will establish the infrastructure necessary to diversify the company?s product distribution into other industries that could also benefit from the advantages of hollow metal nanoparticles.This I-Corps project will explore commercial opportunities for hollow metal nanoparticles. Hollow nanoparticles have substantial advantages over their solid counterparts, including lower mass per particle for reduced material costs, higher surface-area-to-volume ratio for increased loading, and enhanced plasmonic performance. The company?s primary technology is the highly uniform synthesis of hollow metal nanoparticles with predetermined dimensions, surface morphology, optical response, and metal composition. Currently, most conventional LFAs use 30-40 nm solid gold particles, which suffer from low capture rate and low visual contrast. In order to improve the sensitivity of these devices, we have developed more advanced nanostructures which will be captured more effectively and provide greater contrast. Implementing robust customer discovery will enable us to determine the extent of product customization that would be most useful to this target industry. Successfully making this determination and subsequently commercializing the company?s technology would enable LFAs with greater sensitivity, opening the door for platform expansion to previously undetectable diseases and toxins. Moreover, through the company?s immersion into customer discovery and business model canvas principles, we will become experts in the Lean LaunchPad methodology and can then apply this methodology to future target customer segments.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.

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是通过开发中空金属纳米颗粒作为高灵敏度的颜色标签来实现新的和改进的侧流测定（LFA）。LFA通常用于环境监测，食品安全检测和即时临床诊断（最常见的例子是家庭妊娠测试）。公司？该公司的核心技术将提高LFA设备中有源组件的性能，转化为更快，更准确的诊断，更及时的治疗方案，并降低全球患者和提供者的医疗保健成本。在资源有限的情况下，这些优势应被证明特别重要，因为在这些情况下，进入配备昂贵仪器的现有实验室的成本或时间都很高。因此，改进和扩大快速、负担得起的LFA床旁诊断平台是一项迫切需要，将对全球范围的公共卫生产生广泛影响。此外，随着纳米技术在整个工业中的日益普及，在从化学催化到光电子学的广泛应用中，对有意设计的纳米结构的需求迅速增加。在LFA行业站稳脚跟将建立公司多元化所需的基础设施？I-Corps的项目将为空心金属纳米颗粒的商业化提供机会。中空纳米颗粒相对于它们的固体对应物具有显著的优点，包括用于降低材料成本的较低的每颗粒质量、用于增加负载的较高的表面积与体积比以及增强的等离子体性能。公司？的主要技术是高度均匀的空心金属纳米粒子的合成与预定的尺寸，表面形态，光学响应，和金属成分。目前，大多数传统的LFA使用30-40 nm的固体金颗粒，其具有低捕获率和低视觉对比度。为了提高这些设备的灵敏度，我们开发了更先进的纳米结构，这些纳米结构将被更有效地捕获并提供更大的对比度。实施强大的客户发现将使我们能够确定对该目标行业最有用的产品定制程度。成功地做出这一决定，并随后将公司商业化？的技术将使LFA具有更高的灵敏度，为平台扩展到以前无法检测到的疾病和毒素打开大门。此外，通过公司？通过深入了解客户发现和商业模式画布原则，我们将成为精益LaunchPad方法的专家，然后将此方法应用于未来的目标客户群。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。