Applications

Diagnostics

One Health

Communicable diseases affect low and middle income countries disproportionately, often the most vulnerable population (children, pregnant women, elderly and immunocompromised), living in low resource settings. The recent SARS-CoV2 pandemic highlighted the importance of adopting an integrated vision of research and development towards human health and acknowledged its linkage to entire ecosystems comprising humans, animals, plants and the environment. Rapid, accurate, comprehensive and cost effective diagnosis at the point of care or bedside is one the biggest challenges in healthcare.

CrisprBits’s diagnostics platform is an end-to-end solution that leverages CRISPR on microfluidics and integrates with full stack informatics solutions.

Hospital acquired infections including AMR genes

PathCrisp v1, will address the identification of infectious pathogens and AMR genes in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Infectious disease diagnostics

A number of CRISPR assays developed at CrisprBits include detection of virus and bacterial pathogens. Some examples are CMV and BK virus for monitoring in transplant patients, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Dengue virus, Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Rotavirus, Norovirus and Salmonella typhi. These assays can be integrated into any suitable point of care device compatible with nucleic acid detection.

Waste water surveillance

CrisprBits is expanding the application of its diagnostics platform for early warning signs of emergent viral variants and that of antibiotic resistance.

Zoonotic (infections from animals to human) Surveillance

CrisprBits is currently working on the extension of the PathCrisp platform to include common pathogens that infect our livestock such as viruses that cause foot and mouth disease (FMD) in cattles and result in heavy economic damage to farmers and the dairy industry.

Tracking Cancer Relapse

Genetic profiling of solid tumors to detect mutations with critical clinical implications is increasingly used in the clinic to guide therapy decisions and management of aggressive disease. A cost effective strategy to follow up on patients after the completion of treatment, is to monitor the re-emergence of key driver mutations through minimally invasive liquid biopsy tests. CrispBits platform that allows for the development of rapid, accurate and personalized CRISPR assays can be a great tool to scan for the relapse of cancer.

Genetic screening

CrisprBits is working on a single tube proprietary CRISPR assay for the detection of monogenic / Mendelian disorders such as Sickle-cell Anemia (SCA). The goal is to integrate the assay into a point of care device and screen large tribal populations in remote areas of the country, where the disease is prevalent.
CrisprBits is developing a proprietary assay for the detection of 6 human SNPs that have been reported to be associated with severe acute respiratory infection phenotypes in SARS- CoV2 patients. Its proprietary assay design that can distinguish the human SNPs by resolving even single base pair changes as 1/0 signal in an endpoint assay, has the potential to be deployed for rapid testing in low cost settings. The goal is to triage patients and identify those at high risk of severe infections and need for hospital care.