Low-cost Diagnostic for Animal and Zoonotic Diseases

There is a lack of specific, low-cost, rapid, sensitive, fieldable detection systems for animal/zoonotic disease that can simultaneously test for multiple diseases in a single test. State of the art field-detection kits for animal diseases consist mainly of ELISA test kits and PCR devices. However, both these techniques can only test for a single disease per test, thus screening for multiple diseases requires separate test kits and test iterations, thus neither is not conducive to high-throughput testing, and costs increase with the number of tests performed. Further, ELISA can lack accuracy and, depending on kit design, require time-consuming sample preparation and results can be difficult to interpret. While more accurate, PCR is not very portable (though improvements are being made). In contrast, TDA’s proposed animal disease diagnostic system will be capable of testing for multiple diseases in a single test without multiple test strips, samples, or complicated sample preparation. In Phase I, TDA will demonstrate this capability by preparing molecular capture media for selected biothreats, fabricate, test and integrate assays into a single breadboard device, and design an advanced prototype that meets all of the technical objectives for a fieldable animal/zoonotic diagnostic system. In addition to the Department of Homeland Security, potential end users for this technology include CBP (Custom Border Patrol), TSA (Transportation Security Administration), Military entities, Port State Control, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), to name a few.