NIH has awarded a total of $1 million to six winners of the NIH Technology Accelerator Challenge for the design and development of non-invasive, handheld, digital technologies to detect and diagnose sickle cell disease (SCD), malaria, and anemia. Winners are listed below.
Intravital mHealth spectroscopy of microvascular blood analysis for anemia and sickle cell disease
The proposal aims to develop a non-invasive, smartphone-based spectroscopy platform to detect anemia and SCD by analyzing photos of the microvasculature of the inner eyelid.
Young Kim
Purdue University
Lafayette, IN
Rapid, smartphone-based salivary diagnostics for malaria, anemia, and COVID-19
Saliva will be non-invasively collected and analyzed by multiplex lateral flow tests for detection of SARS-CoV-2-specific antigens, ferritin (a marker of iron deficiency), and a malaria parasite protein, PSSP17.
Bala Raja, Andrew Paterson, Rhoel Dinglasan
Luminostics
San Jose, CA
CapCyte: a mobile phone capillaroscopic cytometer for non-invasive blood analysis
The smartphone-based Capillaroscopic Cytometer will non-invasively image thousands of capillary blood cells for cell classification, morphology, counting, and measurement of flow from a single video dataset.
Nicholas Durr, Gregory McKay
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD
Affordable non-invasive and minimally invasive diagnosis of anemia, malaria, and sickle cell disease
Disease diagnosis is performed using a finger cuff to detect hemoglobin variants related to anemia and SCD, and hemozoin, a marker for the malaria parasite in blood.
Peter Galen, Ran An, Paul Addison, Jake Dove
HEMEX Health, Inc.; Medtronic; Case Western Reserve University; University of Nebraska
Portland; Cleveland, OH; Lincoln, NE
Mobile-based assessment of iron deficiency, inflammation, and malaria infection in saliva
A smartphone app and 3D printed attachment will be used in a saliva lateral flow assay using gold nanoparticles to capture markers for iron deficiency (ferritin), inflammation (CRP), and malaria (PSSP17).
Saurabh Mehta
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
AnemoCheck Mobile: A noninvasive smartphone app for anemia diagnosis and underlying etiology screening
The technology uses a picture of the fingernail beds and a smartphone app to evaluate anemia and screen for SCD with a novel algorithm.
Erika Tyburski, Robert Mannino
Sanguina, Inc
Peachtree Corners, GA
Cytophone for rapid noninvasive label-free screening of global diseases
This proposal will employ a smartphone-based device that uses laser pulses on the skin and ultrasound to detect rare circulating malaria and sickle cell disease-related cells.
James Y. Suen
CytoAstra, LLC; University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; Yale
Little Rock, AR; Fayetteville, AR; New Haven, CT
