INanoBio to Build Portable WMD Disease Detector Device Under DARPA Program

Disease diagnostics company INanoBio has received a four-year, $5.4M contract to help an Icahn School of Medicine-led consortium develop a prototype portable detector for illnesses caused by weapons of mass destruction.

Efforts under the contract are intended to support the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Epigenetic Characterization and Observation program, an initiative that seeks to build a device that will work to trace epigenetic markers and analyze blood in half an hour to validate an individual’s WMD exposure, INanoBio said Friday.

INanoBio will utilize WMD agent-specific epigenetic signatures developed by Icahn School of Medicine and other consortium members to create the Field Effect Nanopore Transistor device.

“The FENT combines solid state nanopores with semiconductor transistor technology to create a nano-scale 3D transistor with a nanopore at the center,” said Bharath Takulapalli, CEO at INanoBio.

"Ultra-fast giga-hertz sampling rate of FENT transistors will enable epigenetic and DNA sequencing at a rate of up to million bases per second per pore, which is over a thousand times faster than other state of the art nanopore sequencing platforms.”