Klapperich Lab to Team with BioHelix on NIH Project

Link to news article about the grant!

The Phase I STTR project in partnership with BioHelix Corporation will focus on the most abundant sexually transmitted disease (STD) pathogens: Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG). The scientific literature clearly shows that molecular testing is the most sensitive means of detecting CT and NG and the molecular CT/NG high throughput screening market is currently valued at over $300M/year. Moreover, CDC urges STD clinics to test patients withPOC tests if health care workers suspect these patients are unlikely to return to the STD clinic to learn
the results of the test. Unfortunately, there are no point-of-care (POC) CT NG molecular tests.

We propose to develop a low-cost POC molecular diagnostic system using a design developed at
BU that combines isothermal amplification by HDA with on chip sample preparation.