Akonni Biosystems, a life science tools / molecular diagnostics company
that develops, manufactures, and plans to market molecular testing
devices for diagnosing infectious diseases and human genetic disorders,
announced today the receipt of a $498,780 Phase 2 SBIR Grant from the
National Science Foundation (NSF). This second round of funding from NSF
will enable Akonni to further develop its Lab-on-a-Film microarray
consumable that can be manufactured on ultra-low-cost film using a
highly automated, reel-to-reel production process.
"Reel-to-reel assembly is a method of high volume manufacturing used
predominantly for the assembly of lateral flow strips and flexible film
electronics," said Dr. Christopher Cooney, Principal Investigator on the
grant and Director of Engineering at Akonni Biosystems. "The benefit of
this manufacturing approach is that Lab-on-a-Film microarray production
and assembly can be automated at very high speeds, resulting in ten- to
one hundred-fold savings in consumable costs."
Lab-on-a-Film manufacturing has the potential to produce mid-multiplexed
microarray consumables for just a few dollars. Combining low-cost
production with the multiplexing power of Akonni's gel-drop microarrays,
to simultaneously interrogate tens to hundreds of disease markers in a
single clinical sample, offers the potential to change the economics of
patient wellness monitoring and disease diagnosis. This is especially
true in global health settings, where end user adoption of a technology
depends critically on cost.
Among projected applications for the Lab-on-a-Film consumable is its
integration into the Akonni hands-free, end-to-end genetic testing
system. This system is currently being designed for use in
moderate-complexity lab settings. It primarily uses Akonni-developed
intellectual property, which includes technology that covers cell lysis,
rapid nucleic acid extraction (TruTip®), thermocycling,
amplification (On-Chip PCR™), and microarray imaging and analysis.
Eventual use of Lab-on-a-Film consumables is anticipated in systems
designed for CLIA-waved settings.
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