Sandia researchers are developing portable devices that can rapidly measure disease and toxin biomarkers in microscopic volumes of blood, saliva, or urine.
Biological weapons and emerging infectious diseases pose formidable and growing threats to our national security since pathogen-caused disease outbreaks could result in a devastatingly large number of casualties. To control epidemics, thwart bioterrorism, and protect the public health, medical researchers must quickly be able to identify emerging or engineered microbes and then develop diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines for them.
Sandia bioscience researchers have developed the following platforms to detect biological weapons and emerging infectious diseases:
- Clearance testing with C. elegans. A biodefense application project that is using the C. elegans nematode to create a new clearance testing method for quickly detecting any residual live viruses after post-attack decontamination efforts.
- Portable diagnostic system for weapons of mass destruction. A project that is developing a detector system with ultrahigh-sensitivity chemical detection, along with biological, nuclear, and isotope discrimination in a portable, modular package.
- Rapid, automated, point-of-care system (RapiDx). A portable, rapid device that measures disease and toxin biomarkers in microscopic volumes of blood, saliva, or urine at the earliest stages of infection, resulting in time-critical presymptomatic diagnostic information.
- Rapid Threat Organism Recognition (RapTOR) Grand Challenge. A project to create a new approach for identifying unknown pathogens so that medical researchers can identify microbes, guide public-health response, and develop diagnostic treatments.
