Purpose: Get ScreenedTM Initiative
The purpose of the Fund Raiser is to raise funds for developing cost-effective disease diagnostic and mass-screening devices to decrease healthcare costs and provide medical services in developing countries. We call this the Get ScreenedTM Initiative. Specifically we aim to manufacture paper-based electrochemical biosensors in a cost-effective manner, thus making diagnostic tools available here and also in developing countries, where there are very low medical facilities.
More than 500,000 people each year could be saved with your contribution to the Get Screened Initiative!
Your proceeds today go towards the development of early screen diagnostic sensors for breast cancer, lung cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and many more!
Personal Information
My name is Syed Ahmad and I have founded the Get Screened Initiative as a part of Biotek Scientific Solutions founded in 2019. I am a Ph.D. student at Canada’s top research university, the University of Toronto, working on developing affordable and cost effective biosensors for early cancer detection. Find out more about my research here: https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/people/bkraatz/the-group/ and www.linkedin.com/in/syed-ghazali-ahmad-3aab34a7.
My mission is to utilize my expertise to develop cost effective early diagnostic devices for many diseases including cancer. Any contributions to the cause will greatly enable our goal and potentially save millions of lives.
Why are they dying?
Did you know most diseases are preventable if found soon enough? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), early detection of even cancer greatly increases the chances of success [1]. Furthermore, in 2010, research carried out by de la Torre, with affiliation with the Center for Alzheimer's Research, found out that “Alzheimer's Disease is Incurable but Preventable” [2]. Researchers have also determined that diabetes may also be preventable.
What’s the catch?
If these diseases are preventable, why are so many people still suffering? Well, the catch is that you have to diagnose these diseases at an early stage. Think of it this way: A spot mold growing on your wall will cost you a few dollars to buy mold spray and you can have the problem cleaned up in no time. However, let that spot grow for a few years, and you’ll find the mold will very quickly spread to the very foundations of the house. At this point, you’ll need industrial strength mold-killer, trained personnel, and to throw out a lot of rotten material. The cost will be MUCH higher and the chances of full success will drop. Moreover, the chances of the mold coming back also increases. Diseases are similar. How many people have successfully undergone chemotherapy and been cured just to find out the cancer was back (medically, the cancer “reoccured”)? Research has shown that brain cancer has a nearly 100% reoccurance rate [4], bladder cancer has 50% [5] and breast cancer has 30% [6,7], among many other types of cancer.
What's the solution?
There is a consensus that the only practical and affordable way to solve this problem is mass population screening. Screening is the process of testing many individuals for one or more diseases. By their very nature, screening tests must fulfill a few important criteria:
- Cheap
- Readily available
- Accurate Enough (more on this later)
- Do not require trained personnel
- (Extra) Environmentally friendly
The first and foremost criteria for mass screening is cost-effective production (i.e. “cheap”). No matter how great a technique is, if it is unaffordable, then it doesn’t matter. The same goes for availability. Accuracy is a funny criteria. Generally you want to make the most accurate screening process for the lowest cost. So actually all the screening process needs to do is tell you who is at risk! Then you can take the 10,000,000 citizens and isolate the 10,000 that need the expensive treatments. Lastly, the screening should be intuitive and shouldn’t require trained medical personnel, getting paid $80,000+/year. That will just shoot up the price of the screening. Imagine right now, how many diabetes patients could afford 3-4 glucose strip tests a day if it cost them $20 a test ($21,900+ per year)? This is not treatment or medicine; it’s just finding out if you’re healthy right now.
Electrochemical Biosensors: The Most Practical Modern Solution
Did you know that your blood glucose machine and strips are electrochemical biosensors? Electrochemical biosensors are the cheapest, most sensitive and the most effective sensors on the market. They work by having an extremely selective and accurate biological material (called a “molecular recognition element” or MRE), which binds and interacts with specific biomarkers found the in the body, attached to the metal surface (called the “transducer”). When the MRE binds the disease biomarkers, they cause an electrical change in the transducer which can be translated into concentration of the biomarker indicating the disease.
The Technology Already Exists!
Have you ever wondered what it cost to get a complete blood test done? Well, as you probably expected, it ranges from $100 – $3000, with an average of $1500 [8]. Luckily screening technology is significantly cheaper, coming at $500 per test (we can get it much lower!). Screening technology has been around for decades, except that they’ve been too expensive for mass screening. Take, for example, Abbott’s iSTAT system: https://www.pointofcare.abbott/int/en/home. The iSTAT is capable of simultaneously performing 8 common blood tests and can even do some cancer biomarkers [9].
The Need for Point-of-Care Devices
Remember your last trip to the doctors office? Do you recall how your visit was only 15 minutes but you waited over 2 hours? Now image the same scenario at the ER of a hospital. Patients don’t always have 2 hours of waiting! Furthermore, hospitals don’t have enough beds or staff for all of the patients! This is a result of overcrowding. Overcrowding in hospitals and doctor’s offices has the potential to increase wait times to over 6 hours!
However, we can’t just open more hospitals and get more beds in this economy. A total of 357 acute care hospitals were closed in Germany, 193 in France, 170 in Italy and 122 in Switzerland between 2000 and 2014 [10]. This is the case of Germany, the situation is far worse for developing countries head over heals in debt.
Point-of-care devices (POCDs) are devices that require a few drops of blood and automatically diagnoses patients in a few minutes. Even while the patient is waiting for a bed. This allows doctors and nurses to administer the right treatment within minutes, decreasing wait time and increasing patient treatment. Studies have shown an 80% reduction in time for patient treatments with the aid of POCDs! A study in Germany has shown that the use of POCDs has to diagnose and treat a patient decreased from 70 minutes to 14 minutes! This is an 80% reduction in wait time without adding any additional personnel [11]. Other studies have shown similar results [12].
If the technology exists, why isn’t anyone using it???
It’s too expensive. Take Abbott’s iSTAT as an example. It’s capable of helping so many people, but the machine itself costs ~$7000 and each single-use cartridge costs $400! You might think this is awful, but what can they do? After all they’re trying to make money, it’s just that the materials are too expensive!
The Solution
Our approach of paper-based electrochemical sensors provides all of the benefits and strengths of traditional sensors, except with the addition of extremely cheap paper in place of expensive components.
Benefits of Paper Based Electrochemical Sensors:
- Cheap
- Low ecological footprint: Can be made from recycled paper or even recycled sensors
- Long shelf-life: Paper sensors can last years in storage. This means bulk manufacturing, which means lower costs!
- Easily produced and transported: The technology can be sent overseas
- Lightweight
- Biocompatible: No undesired side effects
- Biodegradable
- Flexible
The Required Equipment
- Government Registration ($200)
- Ink-jet Printer ($400)
- Specialized Paper ($100)
- Conductive inks ($300)
- Ag/AgCl ink ($500)
- Gold nanoparticles ($500)
- Multi-material 3-D printer ($5000)
- Air-tight Microfluic Printer ($7500)
- Composite materials for the 3-D printer ($200-$1000)
- Antibodies ($1000)
- Research and Development + Testing ($50,000)
- Packaging ($30)
- Safe Shipping and Handling ($50)
- Monthly Electricity ($500)
Total: $67,080 USD = $89,236 CAD
Fundraising Price: $80,000 USD = $106,424 CAD
References
1 - https://www.who.int/cancer/detection/en/
2 - De la Torre, J. (2010). Alzheimer's disease is incurable but preventable. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease : JAD, 20(3), 861-870.
3 - Venkat Narayan, Gregg, Fagot-Campagna, Engelgau, & Vinicor. (2000). Diabetes — a common, growing, serious, costly, and potentially preventable public health problem. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 50(2), S77-S84.
4 - Nabors LB, Portnow J, Baehring J, et al. Central Nervous System Cancers, Version 1.2018. NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology. March 20, 2018
5 - Nabors LB, Portnow J, Baehring J, et al. Central Nervous System Cancers, Version 1.2018. NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology. March 20, 2018
6 - Goss PE, Ingle JN, Pritchard KI, et al. Extending aromatase-inhibitor adjuvant therapy to 10 years. N Engl J Med. 2016;375:209-219. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1604700
7 - Colleoni M, Sun Z, Price KN, et al. Annual hazard rates of recurrence for breast cancer during 24 years of follow-up: results from the International Breast Cancer Study Group Trials I to V.J Clin Oncol. 2016;34:927-935. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2015.62.3504
8 - https://www.walkinlab.com/blog/cost-blood-work-without-insurance/
9 - https://www.pointofcare.abbott/int/en/offerings/istat/istat-test-cartridges/menu
10- http://www.hospitalhealthcare.com/hope/hospitals-europe-healthcare-data
12 - Drescher, Spence, Rockwell, Staff, & Smally. (2011). Point-of-care testing for coagulation studies in a stroke protocol: A time-saving innovation. American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 29(1), 82-85.
Copyright Biotek Scientific Solutions 2018 | All rights reserved.