£1M research programme aims to detect disease and reduce time to treatment with compact instrument and disposable sensor chips

University of Southampton scientists and engineers collaborating with the Government’s Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) have been awarded a grant in the region of £1M by EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Programme to develop portable, easy-to-use instruments capable of rapidly diagnosing infection.

Building upon University graduate Dr Zilong Wang’s research on waveguide-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (WERS), and joint work on biochemical detection between Dstl and the Department of Chemistry, the programme’s ultimate goals are better targeted therapy, shorter time to treatment and reduced morbidity.

The team, led by Professor James Wilkinson of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), will develop a low-cost instrument suitable for use in GP surgeries, hospital wards, or in remote communities, which uses cheap, disposable plug-in sensor chips.

These simple-to-use chips will be chemically adaptable to detect small molecules, proteins or DNA, with fluid samples simply being dropped onto the sensor surface, to rapidly detect infection and diagnose disease.

The sensor will first be demonstrated using clinical samples from volunteers who have been exposed to controlled experimental infections in the University Hospital Southampton Clinical Research Facility, and will also be investigated for the analysis of international priority pathogens such as Ebola and plague.

The final product will have widespread application at the point of care and in broader settings such as environmental monitoring and security, and will be flexibly configurable for new locations and analytical challenges.

The research team, encompassing engineers, scientists and clinicians across optoelectronics, chemistry and medicine, will be led by Professor James Wilkinson (Optoelectronics Research Centre), with Professors Phil Bartlett (Department of Chemistry), Michalis Zervas (Optoelectronics Research Centre) and Robert Read (Faculty of Medicine).