Rapid diagnostic chips for detection and determination of the severity of urinary tract infection

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Children presenting a fever without known sources need to be checked for bacterial urinary tract infection (UTI), which may involve infection in the kidneys, or acute pyelonephritis (APN), that can result in permanent kidney damage. Current tests involve costly and lengthy urine culturing for UTI which requires several days and is prone to contamination for young children that are not toilet-trained, and renal imaging with a radioactive tracer which is costly, complicated, and exposes children to carcinogenic radiation.This proposal builds on an existing collaborative effort between the applicant's lab at McGill University with Sensoreal and Parallex BioAssays to develop diagnostic microfluidic chips that directly detect multiple bacterial pathogens in urine and measure blood protein biomarkers for APN. This microchip-based, rapid, sensitive, low-cost and minimally invasive diagnostic device would allow routine testing for UTI and APN, determination of the severity, thus providing high quality diagnosis to guide clinical decision and treatments without the need for neither expensive and lengthy urine culturing nor invasive radioisotope-based renal scanning. This innovative clinical diagnostic technology will impact the Canadian healthcare and accelerate Sensoreal and Parallex BioAssays's product development.