The McDevitt laboratory recently made significant progress in developing and testing the next generation of diagnostic tools for the assessment of cardiac risk factors and cardiac events. Our CARDIUS project is designed to obtain cardiac arrest rapid diagnostic
iformation using saliva and we report significant achievements in both the technological and clinical aspects of a miniaturized device for point-of-care (POC) analysis.

The CARDIUS project is multi-site clinical validation project with several high-impact achievements. After determining optimal saliva collection methods, bead-based “bio-nano-chip” (NBC) immunoassays for 24 protein targets defined the testing parameters ideal for clinical samples. Further developments refined the NBC construction, amenable to mass production, and a reduction of sample requirements from macro to micro volumes. Concurrently, cross-sectional and kinetic clinical studies continue to selectively identify those biomarkers in oral fluids associated with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack, AMI) screening.

Using sophisticated statistical analysis on an extensive pool of clinical data, 13 unique salivary proteins were identified as promising cardiac biomarkers. Comparison studies between combined EKG and salivary multiplexed test, yield sensitivity values in the range of
90-100 percent suggesting that select biomarker combinations exhibit outstanding AMI screening capabilities. This high-profile program was recently selected as part of Science Coalition’s Best Scientific Advances for Year, as well as for the 2008 Popular Science’s “Best of What's New Award” in the Medical Device category for a new saliva heart attack test system.