Engineering low-cost nanotechnology based molecular diagnostics using paper

Emerging infectious diseases continue to pose threats to hospitalized patients, individuals made vulnerable by immune compromise, and residents of long-term care facilities, as well as otherwise healthy community residents. The dynamic nature of microbial populations necessitates a nimble, dynamic, and creative approach to disease control, and requires continuous evolution of public health policy and practice. Here our objective is to create a simple, low cost device capable of detecting multiple microbial targets in a rapid manner. The successful creation of such a device would enable identification, assist in timely proper treatment, and could prevent their spread. Because of the short-timeframe of the project, we selected to focus on highly prevalent genital tract and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and leverage our collaboration with the Ontario Public Health Laboratory, a high volume clinical testing facility with established experience in assay development, evaluation and clinical interpretation that also houses an extensive repository of archived clinical specimens and isolates. This project will provide the proof-of-concept for the feasibility of the technology and once established we should be able to adapt our methodologies to other infectious disease panels (e.g., blood-borne infection, respiratory, food-borne and gastro-enteric) into our device.