Purdue scientists working to speed up diagnostic, therapeutic solutions for COVID-19

Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)Apr 1 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the U.S. and the world, Purdue University scientists are working to move solutions to diagnose and treat the virus to the marketplace as soon as possible.

The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization is working with innovators from across the university to patent and license technologies that focus on the diagnostic and therapeutic aspects of treating COVID-19.

Among the technologies being developed:

• Paper-based and microfluidic, rapid-detection systems that are cheap and portable solutions to diagnose COVID-19 in the field.
• Drugs and vaccine options for treating and preventing coronavirus infections.
• Environmental and surface decontamination technologies to sterilize surfaces, water and air.

We are expediting the review and processing components of our pipeline to move these inventions from Purdue to a world in need. We are intensely seeking industry partners to help us accomplish this mission."

Brooke Beier, Vice President, OTC

Industry partners and others interested in licensing Purdue technologies can contact OTC at [email protected].

Purdue innovators are drawing on their strengths in areas such as environmental engineering, health sciences and chemistry to create solutions to help diagnose and treat people infected with the novel strain of coronavirus.

"I think it is important to note that Purdue investigators are not only thinking about today during this pandemic, but we are pragmatically providing long-term solutions for tomorrow so that we are better prepared for these types of challenges in the future," said Thomas Sors, who is assistant director of the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease, which is currently leading the COVID-19 task force effort at Purdue.

"I'm impressed by the way our scientists and experts are responding swiftly to pivot their focus on this current outbreak. Many of them have already been developing solutions in related areas that can now be re-tooled and directly applied to COVID-19."