LUCENDI, INC. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NICHD

Description

One of the most significant events in our lives is the birth of a child At the same time on average of couples find difficulties conceiving within the first year of trying In our society historically fertility issues are mostly associated with femalesandapos health However in of these cases male fertility issues may be at the source of the problem while typically are much easier to treat The fundamental evaluation of male fertility in the clinical laboratory begins with sperm characterization where the golden standard is to use a benchtop microscope manually and or a computer assisted automated semen analysis CASA system Though partially due to cost and partially due to social stigma associated with clinical evaluation or treatment male infertility often stays undetected This has generated a demand for inexpensive in home sperm evaluation kits However there is currently no product on the market that offers in home and quantitative measurement of sperm count and motility parameters vital for interpretation of semen quality This proposal aims to develop and commercialize a Lucendi Semen Performance Analytics Lucendi SPA platform Lucendi SPA will be a rapid andlt minutes simple to use inexpensive compact lightweight and portable product for automated analysis of sperm characteristics ideal for repeated and continual testing of male fertility and wellness Lucendi SPA will be designed based on a novel lens free microscopy technology developed over the past decade at UCLA by Prof Ozcanandapos s lab Lucendi SPA system will consist of a disposable cartridge for single use and a multi use computational reader Another component of the Lucendi SPA system will be a mobile web application that tracks and quantifies userandapos s sperm characteristics and quality over time provides actionable feedback and easy to understand metrics offers wellness and lifestyle suggestions for improvement of results and stimulates an overall healthy lifestyle promoting wellness With the relatively low cost of computational power we believe that such a compact light weight and cost effective automated semen analysis platform running on a wide field lensfree on chip microscope would be especially useful for in home male fertility tests Potential other application areas of this unique semen analysis platform are vast and include post vasectomy tests either at home or in clinics sperm analysis in fertility clinics including IVF procedures semen quality evaluation in sperm banks stud performance assessment at animal breeding centers and stud health monitoring in farms In addition to these by using a larger area image sensor this platform can also be transformed into a significantly higher throughput analysis platform that can measure spermsandapos response to different drugs or chemicals of various concentrations in parallel Approximately of couples find difficulties conceiving within the first year of trying and in of these cases male fertility issues may be at the source of the problem However partially due to cost and partially due to social stigma associated with clinical evaluation or treatment male infertility often stays undetected This proposal aims to develop and commercialize a Semen Performance Analytics SPA platform that will be an in home rapid andlt minutes simple to use inexpensive and field portable product for automated analysis of sperm characteristics ideal for repeated and continual testing of male fertility and wellness