Health Diagnostics

Save the Children proposes an affordable and exclusive point-of-care diagnostic device for accurate measurement and interpretation of key vital signs (oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and temperature) among young infants (0-59 days) and children (2-59 months). It is equipped with a unique universal pulse oximeter sensor. The device will improve the quality of pneumonia case management and possible serious bacterial infections at community and health facility levels in low-resource settings.

Often faced with financial, nutritional and political insecurities, the majority of women struggle to care for their own and their children's health. To address this, we developed a peer-support model that groups pregnant women together in the same community to receive maternal and child health services, called Chama cha MamaToto (chamas). Central to our approach is the integration of health, social and financial literacy education with a savings/loans program.

We propose the use of a diagnostic technology for TB and HIV based in the use of a chimeric recombinant antibody obtained from a marine organism and modified by genetic engineering, which when added to a sample of blood from a patient infected by a certain disease will produce a visual reaction in the sample allowing the user to do a simple and fast screening of infected patients. This process does not require any kind of equipment and the user can use the test even without previous training.

Our objective is to develop a low-cost Smartphone attachment and application to diagnose and treat bacterial neonatal pneumonia in Pakistan. Currently, serious bacterial infection - pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis - results in preventable deaths of 700,000 neonates every year, 99% dying in resource limited settings such as Pakistan. Signs of serious infection in young babies are difficult to recognize. Diagnostic tests and chest X-rays are rarely available outside tertiary care hospitals.

We have identified three promising urine-based biomarkers from published proteomic studies; our first project activity will be to develop these three urine-based biomarkers into three respective ELISA for proof-of-concept validation and technology transfer to lateral-flow assays.

This project aims to develop an early stage detection of preeclampsia that will be based on the Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Homogenous No-Wash (HNW) platform enabling detection of clinically validated biomarkers without pre-processing or washing from a complex sample in a point-of-care setting. Clinical performance will be assessed using non-invasive urine specimens and optimized assay algorithms to improve specificity for interventions recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Diagnostics For All is developing a nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) platform that can perform sample preparation, amplification, and detection in a disposable, self-contained, cartridge without any additional instrumentation. We propose adapting this platform to deliver a qualitative HIV early infant diagnosis (EID) test that can truly be used at the point-of-care, reducing the turnaround time from over a month to under an hour.

We propose to optimize and pilot-test a finger-stick based rapid syphilis point-of-care test, featuring a novel IgM antibody test (developed by Burnet Institute) that offers specificity for active infection, in combination with a total antibody test (developed by Omega Diagnostics) that offers optimal sensitivity, in one single test-strip. This test will be optimized against "gold standard" reference tests, using approximately 60 plasma samples representing active syphilis, past syphilis and healthy controls.

We propose to develop a rapid, low-cost and effective method for detecting sepsis in early stages. We will take advantage of the potential of histones to be sensitive and effective biomarkers for sepsis, and of the versatility, simplicity and low-cost of test strips. The diagnostic test will be simple, comfortable, easy to interpret and low-cost for prognosis/early diagnosis of sepsis based on histone expression. The test can be used by non-technical experts in any hospital or health center worldwide, though it has been designed intentionally for low-resource countries.

We provided novel evidence that the urine of preeclamptic women is highly enriched in misfolded proteins. Based on this, we developed the Congo Red Dot (CRD) as a diagnostic and clinical prognostic tool for preeclampsia. This project takes advantage of our basic science finding (congophilia of preeclamptic urine), translating it in innovative manner toward development of low-cost paper-based diagnostics with potential to decrease maternal and fetal mortality worldwide.