Using Metallic Nanostructures to Develop Biomedical Devices for Newborn Screening

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Newborn screening (NSB) is a preventative action aiming to diagnose genetic, metabolic, enzymatic, or hormonal diseases, preferably between the third and fifth day of life of the child. The implementation of NSB since the 60's has saved thousands of lives and this procedure is now routine in most of North America. However, 2/3 of the newborns worldwide are not submitted to any type of NSB. The main limitation for the implementation of NSB in low resources settings is related to the access of basic infrastructure for the processing of clinical samples (typically, blood samples obtained through the heel-prick method). This international collaboration proposes to explore distinct technical routes to develop a new set of nanostructured materials for biosensing applications. The goal is to take advantage of the specific optical properties of the materials to assemble miniaturized biosensors for rapid tests in low resources environment. The goal is to obtain portable devices or biosensors capable of performing specific measurements in biological fluids and to estimate the status of diseases that are important for NSB, such as phenylketonuria, cystic fibrosis, and G6PD deficiency, in real time. The devices will be compared to commercially available tests and, if they reach appropriate values of specificity and sensitivity, they will be evaluated with real newborn samples by our collaborators in Brazil. The success of the present proposal will provide a new set of materials and tools that will increase the access of NSB in areas of low resources (rural/isolated areas in Canada and developing Countries).