OmniSite BioDiagnostics Inc. (OmniSite) proposes to aid in the field diagnosis of soft tissue injuries of DOD troops by development of DNA aptamer-based assays for protein markers and hydroxylated amino acids in diluted whole blood. DNA aptamers are novel, inexpensive replacement reagents for antibodies that do not require animal hosts for production and are therefore inexpensive and simple to produce. In phase I, OmniSite will focus its assay development efforts on skeletal Troponin I (sTnI), creatine kinase isoform MM1 (CK-MM1), carbonic anhydrase III (CA III), hydroxylysine and hydroxyproline. This panel of candidate markers for soft tissue injury will be simultaneously analyzed in OmniSite's partitioned microfluidic cartridge by fluorescence polarization (FP). FP provides rapid, highly sensitive and accurate one-step binding assays without the need for wash steps. OmniSite has an intellectual property position, which allows miniaturization of FP into an inexpensive handheld reader format. The fusion of these powerful technologies will provide the DOD with facile and reliable field assays for soft tissue injuries. In Phase II, OmniSite will sequence the DNA aptamers, refine the FP-aptamer assays and deliver an FP reader prototype with model assays for testing.
Keywords: Aptamer, Cartilage, Collagen, Fluorescence, Injury, Muscle, Polarization, Selex
