Project description
Personalised monitoring of vitamin B6 levels
The role vitamin B6 plays in the human organism is essential. Deficiency could cause severe health problems. In fact, B6 deficiency in old persons, alcoholics and diabetics is linked to cardiovascular disease, cancer and stroke. Existing monitoring systems of B6 levels are neither fast nor reliable. They also require the involvement of a doctor, as well as a laboratory, increasing costs and diagnosis time. The EU-funded B6VitaStat project proposes an easy-to-use device providing a low-cost and reliable technique that constantly monitors vitamin B6 levels in risk categories of patients. The innovative device offers a personalised diagnosis of B6 levels and is applicable in any kind of environment, including less-developed countries.
Objective
Vitamin B6 is an essential nutrient and part of a well-balanced diet. However, B6 deficiency is often observed in elderly people, diabetes patients and alcoholics and associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke and cancer. All these risk populations need a stringent and continuous monitoring of B6 levels. At present B6 detection systems suffer from limited speed, scope, convenience and reliability. These tests require a medical doctor as well as external laboratories with expensive and specialized equipment for analysis increasing the overall costs. We here develop a customized assay for vitamin B6 detection with a desired application as reliable, cheap and easy-to-use point-of-care device. This assay system, termed B6VitaStat, is based on the direct monitoring of cofactor binding into diverse enzyme active sites which will be performed in erythrocytes drawn from blood. Key to B6VitaStat is a tailored probe which mimics the structure of the cofactor. This probe is equipped with a recognition tag allowing to visualize binding to B6-dependent enzymes. The less B6 is bound, the stronger the signal, the higher the overall deficiency. This principle will be incorporated in an easy-to-use device that is based on an antibody printed microarray hallmarked by its cheap and reproducible production. The robust array can be used world-wide including developing countries with less pronounced medical infrastructure. The B6VitaStat team combines complementary expertise including chemistry, engineering and entrepreneurship, which will provide a basis for the envisioned commercialization. Given that B6VitaStat will be the first device of this class we estimate a significant cost reduction compared to current clinical procedures. Overall, we aim to introduce a new device for constant monitoring B6 vitamin status in risk patients and provide a cheap, easy-to-use and reliable method suited for all kinds of applications including those in less-developed countries.
Fields of science
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineendocrinologydiabetes
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinecardiologycardiovascular diseases
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineneurologystroke
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsenzymes
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC-LS - ERC Proof of Concept Lump Sum PilotHost institution
80333 Muenchen
Germany