Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

There is tremendous pressure on the health system to rapidly, and accurately detect diseases as early as possible. Many diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases and cancer lack early detection markers. It is clear that the identification of diseases for which there are known diagnostic approaches has had issues in accuracy, such as the recent reports of breast cancer miss-diagnosis. Addressing these issues will require panels of biomarkers that can provide early detection of diseases and which enhance the accuracy of the diagnosis. There are currently many efforts in genomics and proteomics to discover novel candidate biomarkers with a particular focus on panels of biomarkers. Very little efforts have been focused on how these panels of biomarkers will be translated to the clinic. In recent years, mass spectrometry based proteomic screening has shown exquisite sensitivity. It is likely that these approaches will become important tools for point-of-care (initially in hospital) screening of biomarkers. We need to invent simple ""plug-and-play"" devices that can be used in point-of-care for the screening of biomarker panels. Here, we propose to develop novel microfabricated devices in polymer coupled to mass spectrometry for the automated processing and analysis of clinical and biotechnology samples.