SBIR Phase I: A novel platform for virus enrichment and isolation

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛的商业影响将是创建一种病毒捕获技术，该技术可能会提高检测人类、动物和植物中的病毒感染所需的诊断工具的可靠性。建议的设备将设计为易于使用、便携和成本效益高，并可以加快病毒检测，提供卓越的分析和临床性能。传染病的早期和准确诊断对于遏制病毒感染的传播、改善健康结果和减少经济损失至关重要。这项技术是一个潜在适用于广泛目标病毒的平台，可以在不同的情况下发挥作用，如病毒监测、识别新出现的病毒和检测病毒突变。拟议的项目旨在验证这项技术用于直接病毒检测方法的技术可行性，如聚合酶链式反应(PCR)、免疫分析和下一代测序(NGS)，以提高病毒与宿主的比率，并允许更快的结果。该项目旨在开发一种便携式样本处理平台，能够在不使用抗体的情况下从现场样本(从棉签或组织活检中)高效捕获和纯化病毒。这项技术使用碳纳米管阵列通过大小区分来捕获病毒颗粒，同时分离宿主污染物。这项技术可以集成到标准的病毒诊断协议中，与传统的病毒样本制备过程(如超速离心法和膜过滤)相比，可以实现更快、更简单和更准确的诊断。目前最先进的技术在从宿主材料中提取纯病毒颗粒方面存在局限性，特别是当病毒含量较低时，通常会导致假阴性结果。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/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be the creation of a virus capture technology that may improve the reliability of diagnostic tools needed to detect viral infection in humans, animals, and plants. The proposed device will be designed to be easy to use, portable, and cost-effective, and could accelerate virus detection, providing superior analytical and clinical performance. Early and accurate diagnosis of infectious diseases is critical to curbing the spread of viral infections, improving health outcomes, and reducing economic losses. This technology is a platform potentially applicable to a wide range of target viruses and could be functional in different scenarios like virus surveillance, identification of emerging viruses, and detection of virus mutations. The proposed project seeks to validate the technical feasibility of this technology for direct virus detection methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), immunoassay, and next generation sequencing (NGS), to improve the virus to host ratio and allow for faster results. The project aims to develop a portable sample processing platform that enables high-efficiency virus trapping and purification from field samples (from cotton swabs or tissue biopsy) without using antibodies. This technology uses carbon nanotube arrays to trap virus particles by size discrimination while segregating host contaminants. This technology could be integrated into standard virus diagnostic protocols to achieve a faster, simpler, and more accurate diagnostics compared to traditional processes for virus sample preparation, such as ultracentrifugation and membrane filtration. Currently available state-of-the-art technologies present limitations in extracting pure virus particles from the host material, especially when the viral content is low, usually leading to false negative results.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.