NEW YORK – Biocompatible semiconductor company Cardea Bio announced on Tuesday that it has received $1.1 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop an electronic nose to be used for infectious disease breath tests.
The money will be used to develop and determine the feasibility of incorporating breath-based receptors with Cardea's biosignal processing unit (BPU) platform, which is based on the firm's biocompatible semiconductor, to create tests for infectious diseases. According to San Diego-based Cardea Bio, the semiconductor can translate real-time multiomic signals into digital information.
The project is intended to validate the Cardea BPU Platform's ability to be used for sensing applications in clinical health, environmental monitoring, agriculture, and biosecurity. Once the project is complete, Cardea will focus on "developing a point-of-care testing device that can rapidly screen for common infectious diseases in developing countries," the firm said in a statement.
In January, the firm inked an agreement with Siemens Healthineers to evaluate the feasibility of the BPU Platform by optimizing and testing a next-generation SARS-CoV-2 immunoassay.