I-Corps: Glucose meters for the detection of pathogens

Georgia State University Research Foundation, Inc., Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Early and rapid detection of toxins, viruses and bacteria is very important for countermeasures. For example, the 2009 "swine flu" influenza strain spread rapidly and infected people in over 200 countries within weeks of the initial outbreak. Point of care diagnostics are very useful in such situations to control the spread of infection. Rapid biosensors should satisfy the ASSURED (which stands for Affordable, Selective, Sensitive, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, equipment-free and Deliverable to endusers) criteria for wide acceptance. This project focuses on the development of ASSURED diagnostics for a number of infectious agents, with specific emphasis on influenza viruses because influenza viruses spread rapidly and lead to millions of infections and deaths every year. The idea is to repurpose personal glucose meters that are already used by diabetic patients worldwide to monitor glucose levels to detect influenza viruses and other pathogens. It is anticipated that these new diagnostics would directly benefit society since these biosensors can be used to accurately identify infected patients to treat them and control the spread of disease. The long term goals are to develop an unique concept that uses glucose meters in conjunction with synthetic small molecules to detect infectious agents. The specific goal of this project is to detect influenza virus, a highly transmissible respiratory pathogen by focusing on its surface enzyme, Neuraminidase (NA), that cleaves terminal sialic acids from the surface of mammalian cells. Exposure of a synthetic sialic acid-glucose conjugate to NA or influenza viruses leads to glucose release, which can be measured using a repurposed glucose meter. Since glucose meters are widely available and are ubiquitous and have been used primarily to test blood glucose, now can be recalibrated to test nasal or throat swabs from sick patients for influenza. This strategy has broad scope since it could potentially be used to detect other infectious agents or human disorders. The next technical steps towards the translation of this basic discovery to the clinic is to optimize conditions to improve analysis time, while maintaining the ASSURED criteria that include selectivity and sensitivity and validate the results with gold standard laboratory techniques such as cell culture and PCR. In addition to the technical tasks, the goal of this project is to meet potential customers, consider their requirements, explore new products/market and develop strategies to meet those goals.