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Novel Magneto-Optical Biosensors for Malaria Diagnosis.

From October 2005 -May 2009

Vision & Aim

 MOT-TEST is a Europe-wide partnership worth €1.4 million to develop the world's first non-invasive detector for malaria. According to the 2005 World Malaria Report of the World Health Organization, Roll Back Malaria and UNICEF, as many as 500 million malaria cases occur each year, resulting in at least one million deaths the majority being children. Accurate malaria diagnosis is usually performed by examining blood samples under a microscope in a laboratory environment rather than at point of care, this requires both time, expert attention. Alternatively, antibody-based rapid diagnostic tests (RDT's) can diagnose malaria in the field, without a trained operator.However, no current RDT can recognize all strains of the malaria parasite, and they are prone to degradation in the heat of the tropical and subtropical regions where the disease mostly occurs. Finally, these tests cost one to four dollars per use. Although a few dollars might seem insignificant, the cost per test amounts to 500 million to two billion dollars per year considering the worldwide annual caseload.

Now an international consortium of researchers have now produced a novel magneto-optical device that could diagnose malaria without a trained operator and automatically obtain the level of parasitic infection, at a cost of a few cents per use. Additionally, it could operate noninvasively, unlike existing methods of malaria diagnosis, which require at least a finger prick of blood. They hope to produce a point of care device, able to detect the presence of the parasite by taking measurements through the skin, removing the need for blood sampling altogether.

The 42-month project is being coordinated by the Department of Engineering at the University of Exeter in the UK. Dr Dave Newman, representing the university said: 'The vast majority of deaths from malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa where access to basic diagnostic facilities is often extremely restricted. Coupled with the prevalence of HIV there is an urgent need for a device that can accurately detect the presence of the parasite without drawing blood or requiring the skills and technology associated with the traditional method. If we can create such a device those infected with malaria can receive the correct treatment quicker, which will save lives.'The Exeter engineers will be working with colleagues from the Universities of Coventry and Uppsala, theRoyal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam and the companies Philips Medical Systems, Metis Instruments and Eurorad.

Summary:

The objective of this proposal is to develop new, fast and effective instrumentation for the diagnosis of malaria by a non-invasive methodology that permits the precise in-vivo analysis of certain specific blood characteristics. It is prompted by the devastating effects of malaria on health and national economies in the third world, the threat to southern European states following climate change. The malarial parasite is known to modify the magnetic properties of red blood in proportion to the degree of infection through conversion of haemoglobin to haemozoin thus changing the magnetic properties. This proposal will investigate these changed magnetisation states using both the magneto-optical & magneto-thermal interactions of blood as a basis for a potential bio-sensing system for malaria. Currently the most common method of diagnosing malaria is by observation of infected blood using microscopy by trained microscopists. This is time consuming and cannot be accomplished in the field. The project objectives are two prototype instruments: 1) A portable instrument based on electronic measurement of the magneto-optic response of a blood sample. 2) A completely non-invasive instrument requiring no blood sample and hence avoiding potential cross-infection and HIV issues. This project will attempt to break new ground in the field of medical diagnosis using magneto-optics and photonics to access information from biological samples that can therefore be interrogated electronically and potentially non-invasively. The use of these techniques is not confined to malaria diagnosis, having wider application for longer term development in providing a means of interrogating the condition of biological samples where diseased states (cancerous tissues, leukaemia, diabetes) can be identified from fluctuations in magneto-optical or thermal behaviour. A 42month project is planned involving 7 partners from 5 EU countries