Rapid Detection of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in a Noninvasive Body Fluid Sample

Medicortex is developing an easy-to-use, point-of-contact, non-invasive TBI diagnostic tool, which will detect a novel biomarker of TBI, in the form of glycan structures, in non-invasive samples of body fluids, including urine. Medicortex has discovered glycan structures which appear in urine, and has validated their utility as biomarkers for TBI in clinical studies comparing patients with TBI, patients with non-TBI orthopedic injuries, and healthy volunteers. Medicortex will set up a detection method for the glycan biomarker based on the results from prior research and the resolved biomarker structure. The team will optimize the assay platform and chemistry configuration for easy and rapid detection of TBI-related glycans in urine. The performance of glycan detection will be improved through utilizing glycan-specific antibodies generated in the project. At the end of the project, a prototype test will be available in a standard immunoassay/lateral flow cassette. The non-invasive nature of the samples combined with visual detection will facilitate the successful development of a robust diagnostic kit for field use, at the point-of-injury, and for lay use in various situations like military operations, contact sports and mass casualties.