Developmental Grants are awarded to investigators to pursue 2-year projects. The key objectives of these grants are to test innovative concepts, develop new technologies, and support “high-risk” opportunities that demonstrate potential for “high-yield” novel results in the broad area of biodefense and emerging infectious diseases research.
The four Developmental Grant Projects currently underway are described in the sections below.
Universal Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAAT) platforms rely on the discovery that conserved and variable sequences contained in all human pathogens can be exploited for development of robust rapid diagnostic methods; however, they are still costly, labor- and resource-intensive, and lacks portability, thus precluding their routine use for for both biodefense and clinical purposes in disease surveillance, field usage, or point-of care testing.
Our goal is to produce a multiplex immunodiagnostic panel specific for Cryptosporidium, Giardia, E. histolytica, and shiga toxin-producing Shigella and E. coli detection in stool. Additional effort will quantify the fecal biomarkers lactoferrin and hemoglobin, indicators of intestinal inflammation and hemorrhage. The full multiplex panel will provide rapid diagnosis of major Category B enteropathogenic agents of diarrhea/dysentery and describe severity of disease.
Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) are an important cause of invasive bacteremia and focal infections in the USA and globally, which can lead to hospitalization and death especially in infants, the elderly, and the immunocomompromised. In particular, the two most commonly isolated serotypes from blood are Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis.
In the past, detection systems to identify pathogens have been expensive, complicated to use, are limited in the panel of organisms that can be detected, and have high background and low sensitivity. We propose to develop a device consisting of multiple parallel microcantilevers that will be used to detect pathogens in fluid-based environments.