I-Corps: Development of a Biosensor Microchip for the Detection of Cancer Cells at the Point-of-Care

这个i-Corps团队致力于开发一种简单的便携式微芯片设备，该设备将能够从血液和/或组织样本中检测癌细胞。这种微芯片可用于偏远地区、低收入家庭，以及医生办公室、医疗中心、实验室、药房或家中等护理地点。这种低成本、简单的USB设备用于检测端粒酶，端粒酶是一种在各种癌细胞中过度表达的酶。由于癌症是最常见的死亡原因之一，因此，提供一种简单、低成本的便携式微芯片设备将有助于获得预防保健和早期发现癌症的机会，以便进行适当的治疗。该项目的目标是在药房提供这项创新技术，以便在护理地点和家庭使用。这种微芯片将采用碳电极和聚合物基板开发，以降低成本，使其对社会更具成本效益。这一发展包括灵活性、稳健性和响应时间。从提议的创新中受益最多的客户是那些住得离医院很远、由于健康相关问题而出差不好、没有强大的医疗保健计划或希望/需要快速了解患癌症可能性的客户。在i-Corps计划期间，该团队打算进行客户发现，以评估拟议设备的商业可行性。如果商业上可行，建议的癌症生物传感器将为生物传感技术的新科学发现和工程方面做出贡献。合成的设备还将为临床前诊断提供一种非侵入性、快速和准确的癌症检测方法。此外，基于微芯片生物传感器的研究将改进使用类似系统和生物标记物的一系列同等研究。

This I-Corps team is geared towards the development of a simple portable microchip device that will be able to detect cancer cells from blood and/or tissue samples. This microchip might be used in remote places, low-income households, and at point-of-care such as doctors' offices, medical centers, laboratories, pharmacies, or at home. The low cost and simple USB device works on detecting telomerase, an enzyme over expressed in a variety of cancer cells. Since cancer is one of the most common causes of death, the availability of a simple and low cost portable microchip device will help on the accessibility of preventive care and cancer detection at early stages for its proper treatment. The goal of this project is to have this innovative technology available at pharmacies for its use at point-of-care and households. This microchip will be developed with carbon electrodes and polymer substrates to lower its costs and make it more cost effective to the community. This development includes flexibility, robustness, and response time.The customers who will benefit the most from the proposed innovation are those who live far from a hospital, do not travel well due to health related issues, and do not have a strong healthcare plan or want/need to know quickly about the possibility of having cancer. During the I-Corps program, the team intends to conduct customer discovery to assess the commercial viability of the proposed device. If commercially viable, the proposed cancer biosensor will contribute to new scientific findings and engineering aspects in bio-sensing technology. The resultant device will also provide a non-invasive, fast, and accurate method to detect cancer for preclinical diagnosis. In addition, the research based on the microchip biosensors will improve a range of equivalent studies that use similar systems and biomarkers.