I-Corps: Hollow Metal Nanoparticles: Improving the Sensitivity of Lateral Flow Assays

I-Corps：空心金属纳米颗粒：提高侧向层析检测的灵敏度

• 批准号: 1906711
• 负责人: Jin Zhang
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Cruz
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-01 至 2021-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1906711&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Hollow; Metal; Nanoparticles; Improving

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to enable new and improved lateral flow assays (LFAs) through the development of hollow metal nanoparticles as highly sensitive color labels. LFAs are commonly used in environmental monitoring, food safety testing, and point-of-care clinical diagnostics (the most common example is the home pregnancy test). The company?s core technology will improve the performance of the active component in LFA devices, translating to faster and more accurate diagnoses, more timely treatment regimens, and decreased health care costs for patients and providers worldwide. These advantages should prove especially important in resource-constrained settings where access to established laboratories equipped with expensive instrumentation is cost- or time-prohibitive. Thus, the improvement and expansion of rapid, affordable, LFA point-of-care diagnostic platforms represent a critical need and will have broad impacts in public health on a global scale. Moreover, with the growing adoption of nanotechnology throughout industry, there is rapidly increasing demand for intentionally designed nanostructures in a wide range of applications ranging from chemical catalysis to optoelectronics. Securing a foothold in the LFA industry will establish the infrastructure necessary to diversify the company?s product distribution into other industries that could also benefit from the advantages of hollow metal nanoparticles.This I-Corps project will explore commercial opportunities for hollow metal nanoparticles. Hollow nanoparticles have substantial advantages over their solid counterparts, including lower mass per particle for reduced material costs, higher surface-area-to-volume ratio for increased loading, and enhanced plasmonic performance. The company?s primary technology is the highly uniform synthesis of hollow metal nanoparticles with predetermined dimensions, surface morphology, optical response, and metal composition. Currently, most conventional LFAs use 30-40 nm solid gold particles, which suffer from low capture rate and low visual contrast. In order to improve the sensitivity of these devices, we have developed more advanced nanostructures which will be captured more effectively and provide greater contrast. Implementing robust customer discovery will enable us to determine the extent of product customization that would be most useful to this target industry. Successfully making this determination and subsequently commercializing the company?s technology would enable LFAs with greater sensitivity, opening the door for platform expansion to previously undetectable diseases and toxins. Moreover, through the company?s immersion into customer discovery and business model canvas principles, we will become experts in the Lean LaunchPad methodology and can then apply this methodology to future target customer segments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是通过开发空心金属纳米颗粒作为高度敏感的颜色标签，从而实现新的和改进的侧向流量测定（LFA）。 LFA通常用于环境监测，食品安全测试和护理点临床诊断（最常见的例子是家庭妊娠试验）。该公司的核心技术将改善LFA设备中主动组件的性能，转化为更快，更准确的诊断，更及时的治疗方案，并降低了全球患者和提供者的医疗保健费用。这些优势应该在资源约束的设置中尤其重要，在资源受限的环境中，可以使用配备昂贵仪器的既定实验室的成本或时间过度。因此，快速，负担得起的LFA护理诊断平台的改进和扩展代表了一个迫切的需求，并将在全球范围内对公共卫生产生广泛的影响。此外，随着纳米技术在整个行业的越来越多，对有意设计的纳米结构的需求迅速不断增加，从化学催化到光电学等广泛的应用中。确保LFA行业的立足点将建立将公司分销分散到其他也可以从空心金属纳米颗粒的优势中受益的基础设施。该I-Corps项目将探索空心金属纳米颗粒的商业机会。空心纳米颗粒比其固体对应物具有很大的优势，包括每个粒子的质量降低，用于降低材料成本，较高的地表面积与体积比率增加，以增加负载和等离子性能。该公司的主要技术是具有预定尺寸，表面形态，光学响应和金属组成的空心金属纳米颗粒的高度均匀合成。目前，大多数常规的LFA使用30-40 nm固体金颗粒，这些颗粒的捕获率低和视觉对比度低。为了提高这些设备的敏感性，我们开发了更先进的纳米结构，这些纳米结构将更有效地捕获并提供更大的对比度。实施强大的客户发现将使我们能够确定对该目标行业最有用的产品定制程度。成功地确定并随后将公司的技术商业化，使LFA具有更大的敏感性，为扩展到以前无法检测到的疾病和毒素打开了大门。此外，通过公司的浸入客户发现和商业模式帆布原则，我们将成为精益启动板方法的专家，然后可以将这种方法应用于未来的目标客户段。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并认为通过基金会的知识分子和更广泛的影响，通过评估值得的支持值得一提。