Market:

Most infectious disease diagnosis is accomplished by culturing methods that typically take days. Even if superior nucleic acid based tests are available, as in the case of gonorrhea, the process of transporting samples to a clinical lab, batching, testing, and returning results also takes days. There is an urgent need for pathogen detection that gives results in minutes so that patients suffering from influenza, gonorrhea, etc. can be diagnosed and treated during the same clinical visit. Currently, the market for both immunological and NA-based testing devices is $12.8B, while the point-of-care molecular diagnostic device market is predicted to reach $3.9B in 2024.

Technology:

ElectroNucleics is developing a low-cost, robust, point-of-care molecular diagnostic device that gives results in mere minutes. The device is optics-free and does not rely on any form of target sequence amplification and does not require any special reagents other than a complementary sequence capture probe conjugated to polystyrene beads. The output gives a highly selective, binary response signaling the presence or absence of the target nucleic acid. Its cost, ease of use, and rapid response give it critical advantages over conventional nucleic acid detection technologies, for which there are no CLIA-waived tests for gonorrhea, a CDC top-three public health threat.

Advantages:

• Novel electromechanical signal transduction mechanism
• Novel, scalable process for micromachining of glass chips with single nanopores
• Eliminates false positives
• Provides results in 10 minutes

Development Stage:

• Prototype

Patents:

• Apparatus and method for electrical detection of oligonucleotides through pore blockades; UCLA case 2010-444, US 9,428,806 B2 on 08/30/2016

Select Publications:

• Coming soon

Contact:

Email: samybae@gmail.com
Graduated in 2021