Bioaerosols, including viruses, bacteria and toxins, are a threat to human life, socioeconomic stability and national security.A sensitive, accurate, field-deployable detection system capable of rapidly identifying multiple aerosolized pathogens would be a strong defense, but collecting a representative sample of all relevant airborne particles can be challenging because biological particles range in size from tens of nanometers to hundreds of micrometers, a span that existing biothreat detectors cannot accommodate.Submicron aerosols are particularly hard to sample, and Smallpox, Coronaviruses (MERS, SARS, etc.), West Nile Virus, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, and Measles morbillivirus are all potential submicron biothreats.The goal of this SBIR project is to marry the high efficiency aerosol collector from Aerosol Devices Inc with the multiplex biothreat detector from Smiths Detection Inc.Although the Smiths detector offers unparalleled speed and specificity (0.05% false positives and 98% detection probability in 3 minutes), its current collection system cannot sample submicron particles, which could lead to fatal false negatives.The Aerosol Devices collector samples particles between 10 and 10,000 nm with 95% efficiency, making it an ideal collection front-end for the Smiths detector.During Phase I we will design the integrated collection-detection system and conduct feasibility experiments with existing hardware to estimate how much the new collector will improve overall system performance.In addition to sales opportunities within the U.S. military and other government agencies, public awareness of the aerosol-borne transmission of COVID-19, suggests the proposed multiplex bioaerosol detector has a high probability of commercial success.
