Tasso, Inc — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NCI

Description

Project Summary There is an urgent unmet need for simplified and improved blood testing systems that can be utilized outside of centralized clinical settingsBlood cancers are a major health problem in the United Statesrepresenting overof all new cancersAcute myeloid leukemiaAMLis a particularly fast evolving form of cancer with low rates of survivalFollow initial therapy treatmentsAML patients must regularly undergo blood testing to detect against recurrence of the diseaseHoweverexisting blood testing paradigms are problematic in that a patient must have their blood drawn by a trained phlebotomist and then wait to receive results from a testing facilityAny delays or lack of compliance in this regular recurrence testing can lead to the development of life threatening symptomsAt TassoIncwe will develop a novel blood testing platformthe HemoLink MDwhich will allow for self administered patient blood testing at home and will provide a direct fluorescence readout of nucleic acid levels with minimal user interactionThis blood testing platform will utilize our existing HemoLink blood collection device and will provide immediate benefit for patients diagnosed with AMLThe core technologies developed in this worknovel peptide nucleic acidPNAdiagnostic techniques and integration strategies for our blood collection deviceswill have broad utility towards the development of alternate nucleic acid and protein diagnostic platformsTassoIncis uniquely positioned to execute this proposed work due tocollaboration with the laboratory of DrDaniel Appella at the NIHa pioneering group in the development of PNA diagnosticsandextensive expertise in the development of blood collection devices and fluidic platformsOverallour work will improve the quality of life for patients that require regular blood testing by simplifying the testing process and allowing for faster and improved monitoring of critical biomarkersThe proposal consists of two aimsFirsta novel nucleic acid detection assay will be developed using PNA binding chemistries and a fluorophore quencher fluorescent readoutSecondlythis PNA based assay will be incorporated into an enclosed cartridge that will be integrated directly into our HemoLink blood collection deviceWe will evaluate the performance of our entire testing platform using whole blood containing our target of interestallowing us to identify the critical parameters needed to produce an optimized nucleic acid detection platform