This project will develop and commercialize a wireless, multichannel potentiostat system which is small enough to allow continuous in-vivo monitoring of multiple analytes in the rat brain. The team will also develop a highly selective, small glutamate biosensor, and a two analyte biosensor array. This biosensor and potentiostat system provides four main advantages not currently available in a turnkey instrument: elimination of stress-related artifacts; immediate and continuous results provided via a powerful graphical interface; specific analytes in the brain can be monitored selectively and multiple analytes can be monitored simultaneously. The sensors being developed in this project focus on glutamate; however, a system which is small enough to mount on the head of a rat and accurate enough to resolve low glutamate concentrations can be easily adapted for use with larger animals, and other analytes. A flexible and standard interconnection scheme will be used to ensure that the system will be compatible with a wide variety of biosensors (glucose, lactate, glutamate, oxygen, superoxide, etc.) and biosensor arrays.
Marketing strategies are being developed to deliver the system into a market that is conservatively projected to be over $8 million annually after 3 years - expanding at roughly 10% per year, thereafter. The wireless potentiostat will allow researchers now experimenting on large animals to use smaller, less expensive, animals and not be constrained by tethers.
