Awards

Sang-Yeon Cho and Immo Hansen of New Mexico State University in the U.S. seeks to develop a malaria test that measures antibody-antigen reactions through a nanohole to indicate the presence of malaria parasites.

Ethan Lerner of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will attempt to reverse engineer in vitro G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), which usually are used by the human body to sense light, odors, tastes and hormones, to detect selected parasite biomarkers. If successful, these engineered receptors could be used to develop a diagnostic sensor for infectious agents.

Shan Wang of Stanford University in the U.S. will refine a prototype diagnostic platform which uses GMR sensors, commonly used in hard disk drives, to detect proteins labeled with magnetic nanoparticles. By employing GMR sensors on disposable "NanoLab" sticks, Wang and his team hope to produce an easy to use, ultraportable diagnostic device for rapid point-of-care HIV screening in the developing world.

Vyas Sharma and David Lawrence of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic platform based on seed germination by integrating DNA amplification with the expression of reporter proteins in plant seeds to aid in the detection of infectious diseases.

Mark Schnitzer of Stanford University in the U.S. aims to develop miniature microscopes for reliable, low-cost point-of-care diagnosis of tuberculosis. These microscopes will be stand alone, digital diagnostic devices small enough to be carried in a health care provider's pocket or purse and will also be producible in large numbers.

John Fisk of Colorado State University in the U.S. will develop a phage particle that can detect a protein found in urine of active Tuberculosis patients. The two-sided phage particle will detect the presence of the TB protein and also trigger a signal that can be easily detectable.

Guigen Zhang of Clemson University in the US will exploit the capacitive effect of the electrical double layer as an analytical principle to develop low-cost diagnostic tools. This work will lead to highly sensitive and specific and direct-molecule-interfacing biosensors that are inexpensive to build, simple to use, and rugged to deploy.

Joseph Brown of the University of Alabama seeks to develop a low-cost, rapid method to detect pathogenic microbes present in drinking water. Using a filtration system to concentrate bacteria, a tester would add a engineered particles covered in antibodies to detect the presence of pathogens through visual agglutination. The proposed method would take less than 15 minutes to yield a visual result.

Eugene Chan of the DNA Medicine Institute in the U.S. proposes to develop a battery-powered non-invasive finger scanner to detect and measure hemozoin, a byproduct formed by malaria parasites, through the finger's capillaries. If successful, mass manufacturing of the scanner should be possible due to basic components.

Keith Dunning of the Millennium Health Microscope Foundation in the United Kingdom will develop a fluorescent variation of a new hand-held, low-cost microscope. Specimens such as Malaria parasites or Tuberculosis bacterium will become fluorescent at specific wavelengths thus easy to detect at low magnifications using this new palm-sized microscope.