Letter of Intent Due Date: August 21, 2020

Full Proposal Due Date: September 15, 2020

This opportunity aims to support proof-of-concept projects to develop a virus-sensing platform that integrates biosensing with touchscreen or other digital devices to achieve automatic virus detection, tracing, and data collection in real-time.

Objectives

• Identify aptamers or other biorecognition elements that bind to SARS-CoV-2 or its signature molecules with high specificity and affinity. Examine how various conditions (pH, ion concentrations, temperature, hydrophobicity, etc.) may modulate the binding sensitivity and specificity. Introduce necessary modifications to improve virus binding.
• Validate the functionality of aptamers or other biorecognition elements immobilized on the virus sensing and transduction material (VSTM). Evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the target binding.
• Establish and validate the transduction mechanism (electrochemical, optical, etc.) that can effectively convert virus binding to the signal that can be captured by a touchscreen or other digital device. Determine the quantitative relationship of the signal conversion.
• Validate efficiency of detection for the intended use and establish sensitivity, cross reactivity, and the detection limit.

Application budgets are limited to $300,000 in direct costs annually.

For more information, please see grants.gov or the specific NIH RFA-OD-20-014