Biotechnology
Bio-RED Process
Sciperio is developing an advanced monodisperse-layer cellular deposition and imaging system specifically designed to recognize rare-event cancer cells and biological warfare agents in fluidic media.
Despite enormous effort and recent biotechnological advances, little progress has been made in fighting cancer, the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. One in every three people in the U.S. develops cancer during their lifetime, and half of all cancer patients die from the disease. The NIH estimates that total direct medical costs of cancer in the U.S. were over $60 billion, with an additional $100 billion of indirect costs due to lost productivity-the highest costs of any major disease. Current therapies offer disappointing improvements in survival times and cure rates, and produce significant side effects.
Rare-event imaging has profound implications for the early identification of potentially correctable terminal diseases; indeed, detection of cellular rare events will lead to vast improvements in diagnosis and treatment, especially for cancer. The goal of such a highly accurate detection scheme should be to make it into a "routine" test given to all patients, not just to those deemed at risk. This requires not only a highly accurate and repeatable process, but also a reasonably fast and inexpensive one.
Sciperio is developing an advanced monodisperse-layer cellular deposition and imaging system specifically designed to recognize rare-event cancer cells and biological warfare agents in fluidic media. The approach is centered on a progressive method by which to immobilize fluidic samples onto inexpensive, specially prepared adhesive slides with the BAT. Fluorescently conjugated antibodies or nucleic-acid probes are then used for specific labeling of target agents. An advanced, automated scanning fluorescence microscope and charge- coupled device detector are used to generate the resulting fluorescence images. Fluorescence events are analyzed automatically for cellular and/or microorganism determination. Multiple labeling using different antibodies and fluorophore conjugates are used to increase reliability significantly. The work is anticipated to result in ten- to hundredfold improvement in early-event detection compared to existing state-of-the-art techniques.
