The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is seeking parties interested in co-developing technology associated with advancing point-of-care diagnostic devices that reduce mass, power, volume and consumables requirements.
In addition to meeting NASA mission requirements for biomedical analysis and microbiological monitoring of stored water and surfaces, NASA anticipates that such portable, real-time bio-sample analysis methods will be of great benefit to doctors and hospitals and environmental monitoring efforts.
The effort is currently focused on contamination events such as fungal contamination of interior surfaces and bacterial contamination of potable water systems. Future requirements include a need for extended shelf life of consumables, improved autonomy of humans to monitor and respond without outside technical support, and the provision of greater information for decision-making. This information must include microbial concentration and identification, as well as identification of characteristics such as the degree of antibiotic resistance, virulence and toxigenicity. These methods must also address constraints of low volume, mass and power requirements.
Multiplexed capabilities are highly desirable for biomedical research, including: biological sample collection; sample and reagent storage; hand-held in-flight sample analysis (universal molecular sensors applied to several kinds of analytes: nucleic acids, small molecules and proteins, all measured with the same platform if possible); microfluidic devices; flow cytometry; quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR); proteomics; microscopy; spectrophotometry/fluorometry; and miniaturized mass spectrometry.
NASA has extensive experience with Portable Real-Time Bio-Sample Analysis Methodology. This experience will be directly applicable to this co-development opportunity. This co-development project may produce new IP that could be jointly owned by NASA and the partner or may become the property of the partner.
Further information is available under Solicitation Number: NNJ14ZBH008L.