The greater abundance of proteins vs. nucleic acids provides an important sensitivity advantage for pathogen detection methods that target protein biomarkers. Nucleases are a ubiquitous category of enzymes that can serve as protein biomarkers and can be detected via their activation of fluorogenic oligonucleotide substrates. This talk will provide an overview of a nuclease-detection technology platform we have developed to detect various pathogens and also describe some point-of-care applications.

Microplastics that have been manufactured or created through environmental degradation can enter the body through ingestion, inhalation, or transdermal pathways. To investigate the effects of nanoplastics on clot formation, an ex vivo human thrombin/fibrinogen model was utilized. Polystyrene particles (100nm; non-functionalized [nPS] and aminated [aPS]) were preincubated at 0-200 µg/mL with thrombin or fibrinogen and clot formation was characterized via turbidity (405nm) and thromboelastography (TEG) to determine effects on thrombosis. nPS exhibited significant impacts to clot strength, turbidity, and clotting rate when preincubated with thrombin with the nanoplastic impact being greatly diminished when preincubated with fibrinogen in this simplified clot model.

There is a clear and imminent need for diagnostics and broad spectrum therapeutics to minimize the impact of emerging threats. Our team has been working on developing such tools, using the innate immune system as an inspiration for the development of the approach. The diagnostic strategies, and the applications to bacterial and viral pathogens will be discussed.

Autonomous medical devices can support Multi--Domain Operations (MDO) and disaster medical to expand care capability and capacity for large numbers of casualties/patients using fewer human resources. TATRC will describe how it engaged an ecosystem of medical device, telemedicine, data analytic, and visualization technology partners to work together using open standards to illustrate medical device autonomy and visualization technologies in support of MDO and military/civilian disaster events such as hurricanes or pandemic surges. The presentation will describe live, scenario-based use of these tools and technologies in support of next-generation medical care and the opportunities afforded by such technologies and new care models.

The monkeypox virus (MPXV) has recently spread outside of Africa, and the 2022 human monkeypox (hMPXV) outbreak has most reported cases in Europe and North America. We are developing wastewater monitoring systems to detect and fully sequence all orthopox viruses, including hMPXV. MPXV has been successfully and consistently detected in wastewater at low levels, and so far all of the viral genomes belong to the same clade, with little variation.

Breath-based respiratory pathogen detection has been hotly pursued especially during COVID-19. Most solutions collect/measure salivary virus load, or non-specific biomarkers. We present a breath collector that isolates and condenses the distal airway fraction of exhaled breath that yields quantifiable SARS-CoV-2 genomes and host biomarkers in 1 min sample, whilst eliminating virus infectivity.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) is part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Point-of-Care Tests Research for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STDs), hereafter known as the Center, and serves as the technical lead for the Technology Development Core. The mission of the Center is to help companies accelerate their development and overcome/avoid potential hurdles that may arise.

This talk will cover the latest proteomic biodosimetry studies being conducted at the NCI, exploring dose prediction algorithms for both total body and partial body radiation exposures using animal models. Challenges in the development and translation of radiation diagnostics for field use will be highlighted.

Current blood-based and lab-based therapeutic drug monitoring is an invasive, inconvenient, and slow process that does not support accurate correlation between patient symptoms and drug level. Microfluidics-based sensor technology can enable real-time, frequent monitoring at the point of care that could enable the promise of therapeutic drug monitoring for personalized patient drug dosing. Significant progress has been made towards a field-use system for therapeutic drug monitoring in saliva in the context of the epilepsy drug carbamazepine.

Aim: To contribute toward outbreak prevention by monitoring, quantitatively in real time of the infection transmission by POC test. The active pathogens have to be detected directly instead of their fragments in infected persons unlike PCR do with 5-7 days delays from infection beginning. We are developing new piezo-resistive MEMS cantilever sensors, which work in differential mode which substantially reduce signal drift and background noise, being usual issues for standard cantilever sensors with optical detection. Next challenge is photoimmobilization of spike protein antibody on working electrode only.

Fast, simple, and easily deployable point-of-care technologies can provide actionable information in real-time, which is essential for effective outbreak response. However, the gold standard, RT-qPCR, requires specialized equipment and expertise rarely found outside of centralized laboratories. Here, we develop SHINE.v2, a fast, accurate and widely deployable CRISPR diagnostic for influenza and SARS-CoV-2 detection, and VOC identification from unextracted samples with a straightforward workflow.