microTEC is participating in two new health oriented EC research projects.
Self-amplified photonic biosensing platform for microRNA-based early diagnosis of diseases (SAPHELY)
The SAPHELY project aims at developing a compact and low-cost point-of-care (POC) device based on nanophotonic technology for its application to minimally-invasive early diagnosis, with initial focus in cancer. This POC device will significantly help to reduce the actual costs designated for early diagnosis and to implement mass screening programs, meaning a significant contribution to the improvement of the citizens’ health status and to the sustainability of healthcare systems.
Microarrays are a powerful set of technologies which are widely used for the detection of pathogenic micro-organisms, proteins and Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing, among others. Most commercial equipment rely on large readers (also called scanners) and labelled detection, whereas most of the advanced research-level portable and label-free designs suffer from one of more drawbacks, including insufficient sensitivity and specificity, high cost and sophisticated implementation and reduced scalability (number of spots). The overall objective of this project is to develop a new point-of-care label-free microarray platform based on a proprietary interferometric lens-less microscopy design and validate it for quantifying levels of specific Sepsis’ biomarkers within 30 minutes.