ReDia
Ready-to-use Microfluidic Cartridges for Affordable Point-of-care Diagnostics
Principal Investigators at ASE: Prof. Pasi Kallio
Duration of the project: : 1.4.2011 – 31.12.2013
Project description:
The reduction of the testing costs and convenience to the patient have been major driving forces for the use of rapid point-of-care (POC), near-patient testing systems. Currently, there is an increasing pressure to develop affordable testing platforms which really meet the criteria of lower testing costs reputed for point-of-care testing.
An important future market is the developing economies which will bring millions of people among regular contact with doctor and follow-up of health.
This project intends to develop a generic high-sensitive but still low-cost immunoassay concept which is based on nanoparticle labels and a microfluidic assay cartridge with self-contained ready-to-use reagents, featuring simple "add only sample" –principle.
The project pays a special attention on the production aspects, such that all the production steps can be performed cost-efficiently.
Furthermore, the project aims at developing POC testing systems for diagnosing tuberculosis and acute myocardial infarction. The tuberculosis assay has a great potential in the developing low-resource countries, while the cTnI -assay is needed worldwide especially in the urbanized regions.
ASE / MST is the project coordinator and it develops the microfluidic concepts including the disposable cartridge.
Funding:
Tekes, Medix Biochemica, Medisize, Kaivogen, Danaher Innotrac, Kaptas, NanoFoot, Jatec, Finnzymes
Partners:
• Professor Timo Lövgren and PhD Lasse Välimaa the Department of Biotechnology, University of Turku,
• D.Tech Jorma Vihinen the Department of Production Engineering, Tampere University of Technology,
• Professor Vijay K. Chaudhary the Department of Biochemistry, University of Delhi South Campus, India
Personnel:
• MSc Anne Mäntymaa
• MSc Mathias von Essen
• BSc Samu Hemmilä