Our nation's security is increasingly threatened by biological weapons and emerging infectious diseases. In fact, disease outbreaks caused by pathogens that are either intentionally or accidentally introduced into the population could result in devastatingly large numbers of casualties. To control epidemics, fight 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. We believe this is a problem of increasing national importance arising from disparate threats, including the overuse of a dwindling number of effective antibiotics, public resistance to vaccines, a rise in the threat of bioterrorism, and the microbiome’s relevance to personalized medicine.
One way in which Sandia is addressing the problem posed by emerging and engineered pathogens in biosecurity is by accelerating the development of novel technologies that enable known and unknown pathogens to be detected and diagnosed. We have assembled Sandia’s diverse expertise in materials and computational sciences, nanotechnology, microfluidics, microfabrication, and biology and are working to develop rapid, compact, presymptomatic clinical-diagnostic systems.
Specifically, we are developing sensitive, specific, and rapid bioassays for bodily fluids such as saliva or blood. These bioassays will detect biomarkers that have been identified as disease markers through our efforts in protein biomarker discovery and validation. These assays will be employed in high-throughput diagnostic platforms based on our capabilities in micro- and nanotechnology, bioanalytical chemistry, proteomics, and highly multiplexed chemical imaging.
With this in mind, we have successfully introduced a rapid, automated, point-of-care system that detects disease biomarkers in bodily fluids, such as blood serum and saliva. To learn more about this portable medical-diagnostic device, click here.