The long term objective of this research is to develop a multianalyte biosensor system, which can rapidly and simultaneously detect antibodies to antigens of infectious disease agents. One configuration of this system, the """"""""electronic Western blot"""""""", will simultaneously detect antibodies to proteins encoded by the gag, pol, and env region genes of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). It will find application in the blood bank, hospital emergency room and organ transplant donor testing markets. Other configurations of the system will incorporate additional antigens, such as Hepatitis B core antigen (HepBcA) to address an emerging need for predonation testing in the blood bank market. Specifically, we propose to produce and evaluate additional HIV and HepBcA antigens, develop and test novel multianalyte sensor substrates, and comparatively evaluate specificity of the multianalyte biosensor system against existing reference methods. Multianalyte biosensor testing for antibodies is an innovative bioelectronics technology with many possible commercial applications in RAPID human and veterinary disease DETECTION.
