Arista Biologicals, Inc. proposes to develop a series of assays to detect infectious disease patho-ens and toxins on a series of rapid nitrocellulose membrane based assays utilizing coloidal gold, flourescent dyes, and other non enzyme based conjugation systems in both a unitized and multianalyte format capable of semiquantitation with a simple inexpensive reader similar to a home diabetic glucose meter. The goal of the proposed Phase I part of the project is to complete feasibility of at least five of the infectious diseases and or toxins to be studied in the unitized formats and complete feasibility of a single test capable of testing up to 12 analytes on a single device. We plan to investigate the use of flourescent dyes side by side with visible dyes in order to explore the possibility of greatly enhancing the sensitivity of Arista's existing system without a need for a complicated expensive and slower reader or biosensor system. We expect to also complete some exploratory prototype and initial testing of a reader for such a system in order to enhance readability and enable quantification of the visual-results during the Phase I part of the project. Assay strips (with or without simple readers) would be of use, commercially, for both civilian and military purposes, be it medical, veterinary or environmental, allowing a single test unit to assay for 1 to 10 (multi-analyte) agents within 5-10 minutes without other instrumentation.
