I-Corps: Calorimetric Diagnostic Instrument for Acute Kidney Infection Monitoring

Acute kidney injury (AKI) occurs in 5-7% of hospitalized patients and results in a mortality rate of about 50%. A particularly disturbing feature has been the inability since the mid-1960s to substantially lower mortality rates in AKI. The financial costs of AKI are estimated to be 8 billion dollars per year, or about $130,000 per life-year saved. It is unlikely that this high mortality and associated cost will be reduced until better tools for the early diagnosis of renal injury are available. Accordingly, a critical need exists to develop clinically efficient means for the detection of early acute renal failure. This NSF I-Corps project aims to explore and evaluate the commercialization potential of the "Calorimetric Diagnostic Instrument for Acute Kidney Infection" that has been engineered from an earlier NSF funded research proposal. Specifically, the proposed instrument involves a quartz resonator based thermal biosensor concept into a biomedical instrumentation system for continuous monitoring of kidney function based on the measurement of urinary creatinine excretion. Using the quartz based calorimetric device, the team has developed a biosensing system to quantify the concentration of creatinine in urine in a near continuous fashion. The biosensor consists of miniaturized pumps, quartz resonator sensor, electronics, and a replicable fluidic cartridge packed with immobilized enzyme. The idea of having the sensor and its electronics separated from the analyte of interest not only provides advantages in measurements but allows for significant cost savings. Rather, than having to throw away expensive sensors intertwined with the immobilized enzyme, the proposed operational scheme allows for the sensor system to be used indefinitely with only the fluidic tubing containing immobilized enzyme being easily swapped. Hence this design lends itself to a commercialization model akin to the glucose sensor. The team plans to summarize and incorporate the various suggestions from customer interviews during the I-Corps program to build a beta-prototype.