InteliSpark client, Inso Biosciences, Inc. (formerly Tico Biosciences), wins a grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a facile, microfluidic method for host cell and DNA removal that will enhance the detection of mycobacterium tuberculosis during whole-genome sequencing.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB), attacks the lungs and damages other parts of the body. In 2019, TB was one of the top ten causes of death globally, with an estimated 10 million people becoming ill and 1.4 million dying from the disease. TB is treatable, but a rise in multidrug-resistant TB in recent years poses a threat in getting this infectious disease under control.
Effective diagnosis and screening are more important than ever in addressing this public health issue. However, current TB diagnostics are severely inadequate, requiring sample preparation that is labor-intensive, slow, prone to errors, and sample contamination. Inso Biosciences is addressing these limitations by utilizing microfluidics technologies that promises to enhance the detection of TB and will enable rapid and cost-effective whole-genome sequencing, a way to obtain high-level information about mycobacterium tuberculosis using just one test.
Dr. Harvey Tian, CEO of Inso Biosciences, will lead this phase I SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) project. Technologies developed at Cornell University led to the founding of Inso Biosciences.