University of California-Irvine said it will get up to $5 million over five years from the federal National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases to further develop a bloodstream infection-detection system that speeds diagnosis times and improves accuracy.
UCI is one of nine institutions to get awards to create tools to identify blood bacteria that cause infections in hospitals and other healthcare settings.
The funding is to continue work that culminated in November.
That’s when a team led by UCI Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences Weian Zhao found a way to convert blood samples into billions of droplets, then infuse them with a DNA sensor solution that finds and fluorescently marks bacteria.
The process is called Integrated Comprehensive Droplet Digital Detection, or IC 3D.
UCI has filed a patent application for the technology, and Zhao started Velox Biosystems in Irvine for potential commercialization of the work.
