Professor Hatice Altug

Traditional virus diagnostic tools such as ELISA and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) remain strong diagnostic options, but they require significant infrastructure and sample preparation time. Now a team of researchers led by Boston University Assistant Professors Hatice Altug (ECE) and John Connor (Microbiology, BUSM) has introduced a novel biosensor that directly detects live viruses from biological media with little to no sample preparation.

Partly funded through the Boston University Photonics Center and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, the team has demonstrated reliable detection of hemorrhagic fever virus surrogates (i.e. for the Ebola virus) and poxviruses (such as monkeypox or smallpox) in ordinary biological laboratory settings. The researchers report on this breakthrough in the November 5 online edition of Nano Letters.

“Our platform can be easily adapted for point-of-care diagnostics to detect a broad range of viral pathogens in resource-limited clinical settings at the far corners of the world, in defense and homeland security applications as well as in civilian settings such as airports,” said Altug. “By enabling ultra-portable and fast detection, our technology can directly impact the course of our reaction against bio-terrorism threats and dramatically improve our capability to confine viral outbreaks.”

Connor noted an additional, significant advantage of the new technology. “It will be relatively easy to develop a diagnostic device that simultaneously tests for several different viruses,” he observed. “This could be extremely helpful in providing the proper diagnosis.”

The new biosensor is the first to detect intact viruses by exploiting plasmonic nanohole arrays (PNAs), or arrays of apertures with diameters of about 250 to 350 nanometers on metallic films, that transmit light more strongly at certain wavelengths. When a live virus in a sample solution, such as blood or serum, binds to the sensor surface, the effective refractive index in the close vicinity of the sensor changes, causing a detectable shift in the resonance frequency of the light transmitted through the nanoholes. The magnitude of that shift reveals the presence and the concentration of the virus in the solution.

“Unlike PCR and ELISA approaches, our method does not require enzymatic amplification of a signal or fluorescent tagging of a product, so samples can be read immediately following pathogen binding,” said Altug. Ahmet Yanik, Altug’s research associate who conducted the experiments, added, “Our platform can detect not only the presence of the intact viruses in the analyzed samples, but also indicate the intensity of the infection process.”

The researchers are now working on a highly portable version of their biosensor platform using microfluidic technology designed for use in the field with minimal human interference. They plan to subject the platform to initial tests on samples containing Ebola, Marburg and other hemorrhagic fever viruses in the U.S., followed by additional tests in resource-limited countries in Africa where outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occur.

-Article originally published for BU Electrical & Computer Engineering. View original here

The Ignition Award Program awards funds to Boston University faculty to bridge the gap between government-funded, discovery-oriented research and the follow-on development work performed by external commercial or non-profit entities. By enabling researchers to generate relevant data, reach key milestones, develop a prototype, or test an implementation strategy the Ignition Awards will help bring raw technology and business concepts to a mature enough state where they can be either licensed, form the basis of a new company, or create a new, non-profit social enterprise.

Two awards apiece focused on healthcare and clean energy. The Ignition Award winners are as follows:

1) Preclinical validation of anti-hDEspR Mab-Rxtic* prototype: in vivo efficacy

PI: Victoria L.M. Herrera, MD; Professor of Medicine, Director of Ultrasound Micro-imaging Core; Department of Medicine, Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, BUMC

Co-PI: Nelson Ruiz-Opazo, PhD., Department of Medicine, Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, BUMC

2) Large Scale Rapid Response Energy Storage and Electrical Energy Generation System

PI: Uday B. Pal, Profesor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

Co-PI: Srikanth Gopalan, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

Co-PI: Soumendra Basu, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

3) Expressing Mammalian fat-storing genes to generate genetically-engineered plants for biofuel/ oil production

PI: Vishwajeet Puri, PhD., Department of Medicine, Section of Endicrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition, Boston University School of Medicine

4) A Molecular Diagnostic for Thyroid Cancer using a novel miRNA/ Microfluidics Platform

PI: Maurizio Cattaneo, PhD.

Co-PI: Dr. Catherine Klapperich, Associate Professor, BME

Co-PI: Dr. Jennifer Rosen, Associate Professor, MED

The Office of Technology Development works with a committee of faculty, students, senior venture capitalists, industry representatives, foundations and entrepreneurs to review the feasibility and impact of the proposed project and select award recipients.  After receiving the awards, OTD will monitor awardees’ progress and provide strategic business support to help maximize the potential for follow-on funding from the appropriate developmental sources.

Technology Entrepreneurship (TE) offers unique development opportunities for societies to educate and grow local talent as well as build diversity and long-term economic health. GATE –Global Accelerators of Technology Entrepreneurship – is an initiative based out of Boston University designed to support TE in emerging economies by leveraging the entrepreneurial ecosystems and international networks centered at U.S. research universities. As part of an initial needs assessment, please take their survey.

Entrepreneurship as the new development model

As emerging economies continue to grow around the world, there is also a growing recognition that entrepreneurship and market-driven solutions in these countries are highly effective tools for lifting people from poverty. Books detailing this relatively nascent view are already classics, such as C.K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo, which argues that traditional aid from wealthy countries to developing ones has been not only ineffective over time, but even counterproductive. In sync with this perspective, many global development organizations like Endeavor, Legatum, Lemelson, VC4Africa, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, as well as private investment groups like Grey Ghost Ventures and Invested Capital and many others, are now focusing on entrepreneurship and socially responsible capitalism as an engine for development.

In hindsight, the only surprising thing about this shift in perspective is that it took so long. The wisdom of teaching someone in need to fish rather than giving them a fish is, of course, as old as history; given the opportunity and tools, people everywhere demonstrate their capacity for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Usually, the impact of entrepreneurship is discussed solely in terms of wealth creation and (hopefully) large scale poverty reduction. Perhaps, though, the real vigor and transformative power of entrepreneurship is not simply wealth creation, but the factual empowerment and broader opportunities it gives people over their own lives. Indeed, studies have shown that this is generally the primary motive for entrepreneurs starting a business in the first place.

The transformational power of technology

Technology, too, is ultimately about empowerment, as it gives humans the tools to directly shape their environment in dramatic ways (yes, for both good and bad). It is almost stating the obvious that, when widely adopted, technology’s long term impact on society has been greater tan any other social force. This fact, too, is as old as history, but has been brought vividly into focus by the current example of mobile devices. The continuing, explosive growth of mobile devices, adopted in virtually every corner of the world and by all levels of the economic pyramid, is already laying the groundwork for large social transformations in both developed and emerging economies.

Given the inroads that both entrepreneurship and technology are making as positive change agents in emerging markets, we believe there is now an important opportunity for developed nations – in particular for their university-based research communities – to support specifically technology entrepreneurship (TE) in emerging markets.

Technology Entrepreneurship: much greater than the sum of its parts

Why focus specifically on supporting TE, as opposed to entrepreneurship in general, irrespective of the role technology might play? Or why not just focus on disseminating more advanced technologies into emerging markets? We see several reasons:

TE is an engine for diversity. Technology entrepreneurship is greater than the sum of its parts in that it enables a country’s capacity to create and export new, innovative products that initially exist nowhere else. In short, TE is an engine for creating diversity. Recently, a strong positive correlation between the diversity of a country’s product offering and its overall growth has been shown.  Even resource poor countries that have focused on their TE economies have seen sustainable long term growth and high quality of life for their citizens – Singapore and Israel being two widely-discussed cases in point.

On a broader social level, TE ecosystems are necessarily communities in which advanced education, international, collaborative networks and global perspectives – not to mention tolerance, openness and diversity, necessarily have a central place. In short, these are communities working not only to address its present needs, but are engaged in creating the future.

TE is the most effective way to sustainably disseminate technology. Understanding and addressing local market conditions is indeed the only way to disseminate the appropriate technology where it is needed most. This truism holds everywhere in the world, but sustainable dissemination of advanced technologies in emerging countries has been a particular challenge for global development groups, because the local market conditions are often incompletely understood by teams working from developed countries.

Finally, it just makes good, straightforward economic sense for developed economies to engage technology entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Emerging markets mean emerging opportunities for everyone, but these can only be understood and realized by partnering with the local knowledge base and workforce.

The unique opportunity for universities

What can universities from developed countries offer to support technology entrepreneurship in emerging markets? Universities are an integral species of the knowledge economy, both globally and locally. They provide the intellectual resources – patents, know-how, inventors at the cutting edge of their field – on which entrepreneurs can capitalize. Perhaps more importantly in this context, major research universities are the nerve centers of larger TE ecosystems: inventors, entrepreneurs, business students, investors, government, foundations and industry. And they have a diverse, deeply networked international body of faculty, students, alums and their networks eager and willing to make a positive global impact.

-Article originally published in Innovation Management

NobleGen Biosciences holds exclusive license from Harvard and BU to commercialize breakthrough fourth-generation nanopore sequencing technology. Boston University Professor Amit Meller, an internationally recognized leader in nanopore physics, developed the technology. He has won $8.5 million in NIH funding since 2002. NobleGen is run by Meller and CEO Frank Feist and operates out of UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center.

NobleGen’s technology is designed to be 100x faster than the best projected performance of 3^rd generation sequencing. For more information contact Sean Lee (seanlee@bu.edu).

Robots harvesting the tobacco plants

Akin to an industrial or automated manufacturing process, robotically-tended machines plant seeds, tend to growing plants, add genetic specifications, and harvest the plants upon maturity. The weeks-long process is short compared to traditional methods of vaccine production which can take several months.

More coverage on this story in BUToday and Engineer Magazine

The detection system consists of networks of sensors buried in hillsides and embankments at risk of collapse. The sensors act as underground microphones that record all acoustic activity of the soil created by movement under the surface. The movement of soil before a landslide creates increasing rates of noise. Noise rates are created by inter-particle friction and accordingly are proportional to rates of soil movement. Increased noise means a slop is closer to failure. Since each sensor transmits a signal to a central computer for analysis, once a high-enough noise rate is recorded, the system can send a warning via text message to authorities in the area. This early warning will allow them to evacuate the area earlier, close affected transportion routes, and possibly stabilize the soil.

Though this information has been known since the 1960s, this early-detection sound sensor system is the first system of its kind in the world to be able to capture and process the information in real time to provide an early warning. This system may have the ability to save thousands of lives in landslide-prone countries.
Read more about the discovery here

Welcome to Terrier Tech, a blog about technology, research and innovation at BU, from the Office of Technology Development at Boston University.

We’re using this blog not only to disseminate information, but more importantly, to highlight amazing and sometimes previously unrecognized research and technology developments at the university and through the individual work of faculty and students.

The Office of Technology Development provides a service to the Boston University community- faculty, students, alumni- the translation of their ideas into useful products and services. We provide this service through patent filing, licensing, mentorship, funding, and business incubation.

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-OTD at BU