Imagine a phone-sized blood cell counter that needs no blood. Innovative optics see through the skin, and count white cells as they flow past a miniature lens.
The white cell count is the first line indicator for medical applications ranging from chemotherapy management to the detection of life threatening infection in a targeted world population of 4 billion people.
We learned that many cancer patients can tolerate a higher frequency of chemotherapy infusions than they typically get, and that with a higher frequency comes the high potential for better treatment outcomes. So we began to develop a personalized daily home blood test that will indicate when patients are ready for the next infusion ahead of the typical scheduling. Our optics-based test is non-invasive, detecting key informative blood cells through the skin without pain.. A potentially transformative improvement in chemotherapy management.
The key blood cells for our cancer application are also the key blood cells detected in acute infection. A simple test for these cells is sought throughout the resource poor regions of the world; especially where HIV-associated bacterial co-infection is endemic. There are approximately 4 billion people living in rural regions of our planet who currently have little or no access to testing for infection, which we've set out to provide.
The project is completing its proof of principle phase and entering its first clinical tests with chemotherapy patients.
This project could not have been possible without the technical contributions of Luis Soenksen (experimental design), Jason Tucker-Schwartz (optics) and Ola Kalinowska (mechanical engineering).
