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Bridging the gap in nanoparticle-based enzyme biosensing (Naturale-POC)
Start date: Apr 1, 2013, End date: Mar 31, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

There is growing commercial interest in bio-responsive materials because of their many applications, such as in medicaldiagnostics at the point of care and in drug discovery and development. Our developed assay technologies manipulatethe properties of gold nanoparticles and enzyme-based reactions to detect enzyme activity. Most diagnostics target eitherexpressed antigens (immunodiagnostics) or DNA (molecular diagnostics).Our bio-responsive nanoparticle technology can offer a sensitive, specific and affordable platform for the development of rapidpoint-of-care tests based on simple colour readouts. Additionally one of the great advantages of our technology is the factthat, in addition to diagnosing disease, it can also potentially help in the search for new drugs to treat those diseases. Incontrast to methods that simply measure enzyme concentration, our method actually measures enzyme activity. In this ERCPOC our expected outcomes include a number of important commercial milestones and technical developments to expandthe platform to other diseases and test its application in high throughput drug screening. This valuewill carry through in both licensing and spin-out, since these issues are fundamental to any business venture. Furthermore,we propose a balanced plan that includes technical research combined with commercial investigations and identificationof appropriate industrial partners. At the conclusion of this work, we will be in a much stronger position to immediatelycommercialise this technology, bringing its benefits to the broader healthcare market.
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