MBio Diagnostics garners $1.4M award to develop low-cost HIV diagnostic device

MBio Diagnostics (Boulder, BO) has received a $1.4 million, two-year award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health, to develop a low-cost, point-of-care, HIV antigen/antibody combination diagnostic device. The device will employ the company's fluorescence assay illumination system, which incorporates a low-cost, highly reproducible variation on planar waveguide technology.

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The company has a longstanding collaboration with a team of infectious disease experts at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) and will build on the UCSD group’s extensive clinical expertise in acute HIV infection diagnosis as part of the development program.

Michael J. Lochhead, MBio’s diagnostics CTO and the grant’s principal investigator, says, “A major goal of this project is to simplify assay workflow to the point it can be run by minimally trained operators in a variety of health care settings. The milestone aim of this project is a portable, integrated system delivered to clinical collaborators that meets FDA CLIA waiver guidance requirements.”

For more information, visit www.mbiodx.com.

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