Each year, an estimated 110,000 children are born with Congenital Rubella Syndrome and >100,000 die of measles. The diagnostic labs required to monitor and combat these diseases perform 2 million tests per year, and the associated costs present a major obstacle to the elimination of these diseases. We just applied for a grant with Grand Challenges Canada that would involve developing a field-deployable version of DropBot for point-of-care immunoassays targeting measles and rubella. This could facilitate a distributed surveillance network that would significantly reduce the cost of vaccination programs and allow for quick responses to outbreaks.
This project builds on our expertise in immunoassays on DMF [1, 2] and our recently published paper-based DMF devices [3], which use inkjet printing of silver nanoparticles to significantly reduce the cost of device fabrication. Please take a minute to check out our video and “Like” our application.