Grant: Idea to Innovation

Marijuana/Cannabis is the most frequently detected drug of abuse, imposing a significant burden on public safety. For example, driving under the influence of cannabis impairs driving skill and the use of marijuana in the workplace is believed to be correlated with increased risk of adverse events and loss of productivity. With the recent worldwide changes in the legalization of marijuana, including Cannabis Act (Bill C-45) in Canada, there is a pressing need for reliable on-site screening tests for Cannabis consumption. The current established cannabis testing methods are laboratory-based techniques for the detection of the cannabis metabolites in urine or blood which take 1 to 3 hours and require laboratory settings; however, the logistics of obtaining urine or blood samples on site represents a major limitation of current methods. In response to these needs, recently, oral fluid cannabis detection systems based on lateral flow immunoassays (LFIAs; such as those used in detection of pregnancy hormones from urine) have been proposed and even commercialized; yet, even the most sensitive existing LFIA systems cannot detect Cannabis at the legally required concentrations which can be as low as 2ng/ml in Canada (or 1ng/ml in many European countries). Our laboratory has recently developed an ultrasensitive Thermo-Photonic Imaging (TPI) system for measurement and interpretation of LFIAs based on thermal/heat signatures. Our study results on pregnancy hormone LFIAs as well as preliminary results on oral fluid Cannabis LFIAs have shown that our patent-pending TPI technology can reliably detect Cannabis at concentrations even lower than what is legally considered significant. As such, the goal of the proposed project is to design, build, evaluate and refine a commercially-viable TPI prototype for reliable detection of cannabis consumption from oral fluid at legally-required detection concentrations as low as 2ng/ml. This project will not only contribute to the Canadian economy through its commercialization activities, but also will serve interests of the Canadian public by empowering law enforcement with an accurate tool to test for driving under the influence cannabis in order to make Canadian roads safer.