The initial round of funding from NSF will enable Akonni to assess the feasibility of developing a lab-on-a-film microarray device that can be manufactured in a reel-to-reel format.
Akonni said Reel-to-reel (lab-on-a-film) manufacturing has potential to reduce costs of producing highly multiplexed molecular tests.
According to Washington G-2 Reports Advisory Services’ 2008 Molecular Diagnostics Survey, molecular and genetic test volumes have reached 40 million annual tests in the US and are expected to double by 2012.
Akonni Biosystems principal investigator on the grant and director of Engineering Christopher Cooney said reel-to-reel assembly is a method of high volume manufacturing used predominantly for the assembly of lateral flow strips and flexible film electronics.
"The benefit of this manufacturing approach is that lab-on-a-film microarray production and assembly can be automated at very high speeds, resulting in ten to one hundred-fold savings in costs," Cooney said.
