Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This application is for a phase II Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) project as a direct continuation of the previously funded one-year long phase I CRD project ""Point-of-care fiber optic multifunction platform"" that is scheduled to end in the fall of 2015. The phase I CRD resulted in a development of a proof-of-concept device for point of care molecular diagnostic testing of genetic mutations or infectious agents in bio-samples. While the Spartan internal R&D team builds upon the proposed design and optimize the device for future commercialization, our task in this follow-up CRD project is to explore fully a variety of alternative designs that were considered for the prototype but not pursued for lack of time. The phase II CRD will focus primarily on developing a version 2 device to address some potentially critical issues of reliability, cost of production and operation, and sensitivity. As such, our efforts will be aimed at a) developing a reliable plasmonic coating for efficient and uniform heating of the sampling volume using the near-infrared light as well as b) maximizing the visible light out-coupling and fluorescence excitation and c) enhancement. We will also look into d) exploring alternative meanings of light delivery such as multimode and grating-less fibers. The first pre-prototype device was based on TFBG and represents the best technical solution in terms of control and accuracy in monitoring the processes. However capabilities provided by the technology are rather an ""overkill"" and mass production and integration of this platform with currently available systems would likely result in a technically more demanding product, that would require more skilled operators and would therefore be more expensive to the final user. As such, the proposed phase II CRD will include experiments with the original TFBG based platform in parallel with new inexpensive and less rigorous but potentially commercially more promising designs.