OraSure to Participate with University of Pennsylvania in Oral Fluid Research Grant
OraSure Technologies, Inc., the market leader in oral fluid diagnostics, announced today that it will participate in a $4.2 million four-year grant for research and development of saliva/oral fluid-based diagnostic technologies, awarded by the National
Institutes of Health to the University of Pennsylvania.
The grant will fund work by a multidisciplinary group of
scientists from OraSure and the University's School of Dental Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The grant will cover basic research in three main areas, including new technologies for collecting bacterial/viral protein and nucleic acid samples from the human mouth, the combination of the University of Pennsylvania's microfluidic processing technology with OraSure's Up-Converting Phosphor Technology (UPT(TM)) for sample detection, and the identification of viral or bacterial markers.
"This grant is further evidence of OraSure's leadership in the
field of oral fluid diagnostics, and will help us continue to maintain
that leadership position through further funded development of our UPT(TM) and UPlink(TM) technologies", said Sam Niedbala, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer of OraSure Technologies. "The funding expected from this grant will support critical basic research as we seek to define the full capabilities of UPT(TM) and UPlink(TM) in oral fluid diagnostics."
Funding under the $4.2 million grant is expected to be made
available over a four-year period, with approximately $1 million
available in the first year and slightly more than $1 million
available each year thereafter. Approximately $400,000 will be made available to fund work performed by OraSure during the first year.
Payments under the grant in the second, third and fourth years,
which are expected to approximate the funding levels available in year one, will be subject to availability of funds and satisfactory
progress of the research and development project.
Scientists at Penn's School of Dental Medicine will work to
develop new methods for sampling the oral cavity to yield bacterial
and viral pathogens as well as antibodies to those pathogens.
Novel microfluidic technologies, developed at Penn's School of
Engineering and Applied Science, will be used to process the oral
samples and carry out amplification of bacterial and viral genetic
materials. These samples will then be detected utilizing the
UPlink(TM) technology.
"The net result is intended to be the rapid, on-site
identification of multiple pathogens and antibodies to these
pathogens," said Dr. Daniel Malamud, professor of biochemistry at
Penn's School of Dental Medicine and the University's principal
investigator for the grant. "This technology should have broad
applications in the field of infectious disease diagnosis, including
agents associated with bioterrorism."
