Livermore lab and UC Davis get $8.5M grant for rapid blood tests

San Francisco Business Times - November 29, 2007
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2007/11/26/daily40.html


Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 11:02 AM PST
Livermore lab and UC Davis get grant for rapid blood tests

San Francisco Business Times

An $8.5 million, five-year grant will help researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, develop rapid tests for blood infections.

These so-called point-of-care tests could give doctors results in an hour rather than the several days required by conventional tests. This would make them useful in emergency shelters after a disaster.

The grant comes from a unit of the National Institutes of Health -- the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

UC Davis and Livermore lab have set up a joint project called the Center for Point-of-Care Technologies, which seeks to develop portable medical tests that are tough enough to be used outside a clinic during an emergency.

Gerald Kost of the UC Davis Health System directs the center. Ben Hindson and John Dzenitis of Livermore lab are overseeing grant work there.

Researchers will spend the grant on two prototype detectors -- one meant for hospital use and one that is portable.

The devices will be aimed at major hospital-acquired infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus as well as at bacteria that cause severe pneumonia.



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