Novel Sensor for Fast, Portable Diagnostics Wins 2020 Chemistry Award

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Pawan Jolly, senior research scientist in the lab of Donald Ingber at the Wyss Institute, was named Metrohm USA’s 2020 Young Chemist of the year at Pittcon 2020 earlier this month. Jolly was awarded $10,000 for his development of the eRapid, a low-cost, affinity-based electrochemical sensing platform that can simultaneously detect a broad range of biomarkers with high sensitivity and selectivity in complex biological fluids—using as little as a single drop of blood.

Central to the eRapid is a novel, antifouling nanocomposite coating to which probes are attached that are specific to the target biomarker. When the target binds to the probe, it attracts a second probe to create a “sandwich” that triggers the formation of a local precipitate on the coated electrode surface that is electrically active. The size of the electrical signal generated correlates with the concentration of the target detected in the sample, and because the precipitate forms locally, many different biomarkers can be tested in parallel on the same sample.

Laboratory Equipment’s Editor-in-Chief Michelle Taylor caught up with Jolly right after Michael Allen, Metrohm USA’s vice president of marketing, handed him the obligatory “big check.” Here’s what Jolly had to say about his novel research and brand-new award.

MT: What makes your eRapid novel?
PJ:
Our motivation in developing the eRapid was to make a point-of-care device for doctors that was simple and cost-effective. Throughout my studies and Ph.D., I noticed the main issue with other electrochemical devices was biofouling. We wanted to address the main issue—we didn’t want to go around it. You could use complex engineering aspects to circumvent it, but that is going to make the resulting device more complicated.

The most important aspect of the sensor is our coating. With our coating, we retain more than 90 percent of conductivity. That is a step forward in the entire field of sensitive electrochemical sensors. The other part is our proprietary molecule. We can detect a range of biomarkers in less than 5 minutes with just 10 microliters of plasma.

MT: Why did you decide to build a sensor that was capable of targeting not just one biomarker, but biomarkers for multiple diseases and diagnoses?
PJ:
There are indications where one target is not enough. For instance, sepsis doesn’t have a good biomarker. It’s not like pregnancy where you can detect one marker and immediately know you are pregnant.

Additionally, if someone is having an issue, it’s easier for a doctor to just do a quick check of everything using the device, rather than run multiple tests on multiple instruments. The eRapid gives the whole story through one test.

MT: You mentioned point-of-care solutions being critically important to the future of healthcare, especially in remote regions. Why is that?
PJ:
In remote settings like India, we don’t have accessibility to the diagnostic space, and you cannot bring big equipment to these locations. Beyond that, in the diagnosis state, there is so much waiting. You don’t want to wait for something to be diagnosed. You don’t want to have anxiety factor into it. With increases in the aging population, we need better and faster management of diseases. The way the trend is going is toward personalized medicine. If that’s the case, you need to think about these devices.

MT: What is next for the eRapid?
PJ:
We are de-risking the technology and looking into the business side of development, like licensing, partnership or spin-off. My personal motivation is spin-off, so me and my team are working very hard to understand the market. We don’t want to push the technology into the market, we want the market to tell us if there is a need. At the same time, I want the product to be in the market as soon as possible, so whatever is best, we’ll go forward with that.

MT: What are your plans for the award money?
PJ:
I haven’t really thought about that, actually! Until today, I wasn’t sure if the conference was going to take place with the COVID-19 concerns. I’ll have to think about it now. Well, I can’t travel with epidemic restrictions in place now anyway, so I’ll have to save the money for now.

This year marks Metrohm’s 8thAnnual Young Chemist Award. The competition is open to all undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate and doctorate students residing and studying in the U.S. and Canada who are performing novel research in the fields of titration, ion chromatography, spectroscopy and electrochemistry.

Two $1,000 runner-up prizes were awarded to Fay Nicholson from the Dana Faber Cancer Institute for  her research on in vivo imaging of cancer using surface-enhanced spatially offset resonance Raman spectroscopy, and Sabrina Younan from San Diego State University for her work on stabilizing silicon nanowires with a zinc-doping for photoelectrochemical H2 generation.

Photo: The eRapid’s antifouling coating on top of the electrode that is permeated by conductive components. When a target (yellow) binds to its probe (purple), it attracts a secondary probe (magenta) that initiates the precipitation of a compound onto the electrode, generating an electrical signal that reports the concentration of the target molecule. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University