Heather Mead, a researcher at TGen North in Flagstaff, is developing a new diagnostic test for Valley fever to provide a more accurate diagnosis with high sensitivity and specificity. The research team is hoping to license their technology to a major Arizona-based clinical laboratory or adapt into a lateral flow assay to allow for rapid point-of-care testing.
Valley fever remains underdiagnosed due to limitations of current assays, which suffer from low sensitivity. The fungus lives in the soil in the greater southwestern United States with Arizona having some of the highest case rates in the country.
The TGen North project led by Mead, in partnership with Northern Arizona University and University of California, Davis, received one of seven $100,000 Translational Seed Grants this year from the Flinn Foundation. Since 2013, the Foundation has committed more than $10 million in seed grants to 90 research teams that are advancing translational research and the goals of Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap.
Details about the next seed grants application cycle will be released soon.