Global security experts concur that naturally occurring and man-made pathogens represent one of the major risks to mankind [2, 3]. Indeed, in 1918-20 the Spanish flu killed ~50 million – more than WW1, WW2, Korean and Vietnam wars combined. While Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos imaging raising humanity to 1 trillion to colonize the Solar system, infections appear to be the greatest general risk for humanity survival.
To mitigate the risk, mankind requires an infrastructure capable of localizing the outbreaks and preventing the emergence of new infections. We envision the infrastructure based on two clusters of open source platforms: for analytical use in laboratories and for home-use. TIRF Labs’ team of scientists and engineers has developed such platforms – TIRF Analytix and i-Diagnostics. The U.S. Government granted $4.3M for Phase 1 of our project. We are ready to move to Phase 2 to make TIRF Analytix available to all researchers and i-Diagnostics – for everyone on the globe. TIRF Analytix cluster includes TIRF microscopy for single molecule biology, and real-time TIRF microarrays for mega-diagnostics and drug screening. i-Diagnostics cluster comprises gadgets for home-use.
TIRF Labs’ team is uniquely well positioned in the area of molecular diagnostics and our way to give back to society is to create the open source platforms for global infrastructure of precision medicine. We are committed to make the TIRF Analytix available to every research group worldwide, and the i-Diagnostics – affordable for all. We envision that the infrastructure will be supported by governments and communities of users worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that efficient mitigation for this risk of pandemics requires such global infrastructure.
In turn, the envisioned infrastructure requires rapid and accurate diagnostics, as well as rapid drug screening platform, biomarker discovery tools and a platform suitable for molecular mechanisms studies. Our mission is to create such platform available to all research groups and precision diagnostics available to everyone. The technological capabilities already exist. TIRF Labs’ team of scientists and engineers has developed such platform technology, called i-Diagnostics. It is well-suited for the infrastructure and will naturally consolidate the efforts of numerous actors worldwide to perform preventive and reactive countermeasures.
These efforts will be efficient if i-Diagnostics and TIRF Analytix become Open Source platforms and the development tools begin to be affordable to thousands of research groups. Currently, the TIRF Analytix and i-Diagnostics application development tools are costly. Therefore, we inquire The Giving Pledge members and other philanthropists to donate to this project to accelerate the process of making i-Diagnostics and TIRF Analytix genuine Open Source platforms and, thus, improve the situation with global biological safety.
Our mission is to make the platforms available to numerous independent experts who can develop their applications. We will assist in creating the envisioned infrastructure based on the intelligence of a global network of scientists, medical doctors, and users.
We are delighted to invite you to become a part of this global effort, which can revolutionize the current state of medicine, improve the quality and reduce the cost of healthcare by billions of dollars. Let’s change the future of healthcare together to be always a step ahead of any disease.
Goal
Our goal is to transform i-Diagnostics and TIRF Analytix into Open Source platforms. The downside of complex diagnostic panels is that they require major R&D efforts. If the open-source platforms become available to a large database of experts worldwide, thousands of applications based on their areas of expertise will naturally create the infrastructure preventing the emergence and spread of infections. We believe that the Open Source status is critically important for this purpose, while cost-efficient hardware of i-Diagnostics and TIRF Analytix is essential for broad market acceptance. TIRF Labs’ team systematically pursues this goal since 2004.
In 2008-16, the US government granted TIRF Labs $4.3M in BAA and SBIR awards to develop such diagnostics. We excelled in our Phase 1 efforts, invented a family of TIRF Analytix instruments and prototyped i-Diagnostics platform technology, which is suitable for a broad range of applications from the detection of viral infections to cancer panels and longevity prognosis, drug screening and biomarker discovery. With the capability of assaying over 100 different markers simultaneously, we believe that our invention opens a new era of mega-diagnostics, where one test can replace a dozen of current tests.
Our technical objective is to combine nanotechnology and microfluidics, nano-fabrication, and micro-photonics with molecular beacon, aptamer beacon, and aptabodies bioassays to downsize the mega-diagnostics laboratory to a handheld device suitable for home use. Our target cost for the i-Diagnostics reader to be below $400 and cartridges $1- $10.
With Phase 1 already being completed, TIRF Labs is looking to raise 2 million USD to start the Phase 2 effort. The overall Phase 2 effort will require an estimated 75 million USD to make i-Diagnostics available to everyone and to create the envisioned infrastructure.
In Phase 2 we plan to refine the TIRF Analytix and application development tools that will be shared with the diagnostics research community. We also plan to upgrade TIRF Analytix instruments and the handheld i-Diagnostics and start manufacturing. We will develop several applications in our lab. However, the main goal is to create a global infrastructure with a broad range of FDA-approved applications to prevent the spread and even emergence of infections.