Buying Time to Save Lives: New Technology for Medical Tests

Salt Lake City-based Nanopartz is an innovative supplier of gold nanoparticle-based products for diagnostic and testing markets.

About the Nanotechnology Biosensors Team

Drawing on the University of Utah’s strengths in nanotechnology, USTAR innovator Marc Porter, Ph.D. leads the Nano Institute of Utah and the NanoBiosensors Team. The team is developing cutting-edge diagnostic tools, based on research in disease marker detection, therapeutic compounds, nano- and biomaterials, and biocatalysts. Discoveries could make cancer and other disease treatments more effective by giving clinicians fast, sensitive and inexpensive tests, and hence more opportunity, to treat patients.
2008 Highlights

Taking a Swipe at Disease

  • Announced a prototype device that uses cost-effective “credit card swipe” technology to quickly detect disease conditions using only a drop of blood, saliva or urine.
  • Worked with Concurrent Analytical, Inc. to secure a $100,000 federal SBIR research grant to create a new herpes test.
  • Relocated a business subsidiary of Concurrent Analytical, Nanopartz, to Salt Lake City. Nanopartz is the first and only known commercial source for gold nanoparticle-based products called nanorods, and it signed two significant distributor agreements in the last year.
2009 Goals

Building on Utah's Life Science Legacy

  • Develop new tests for vitamin deficiency, Johne’s disease, Crohn’s disease and Herpes Simplex virus—each with multi-million dollar market potential.
  • Seek multi-million dollar federal and industry-sponsored funding to research. develop, commercialize and advance products for immunodiagnostic assays.
Marc Porter and colleagues are developing a remarkable chip-based diagnostic tool that may make its way into ordinary clinics.

The Push for Personalized Healthcare

The nanotechnology market is projected to be $27 billion in the U.S., and $750 billion worldwide, by 2015. With personalized healthcare emerging and dramatic changes to the healthcare economy on the horizon, USTAR supports Utah’s leadership in life science innovation. New low-cost, easily-administered tests could prove to be a high-growth industry for Utah and a boon to health providers everywhere.