From PhD to ‘Oscars of Research

 

MONDAY 10 MAY 21

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By Tom Nervil

Contact

Mikkel Fougt Hansen

Cooperation with Cathrine Frandsen

DTU Physics

mfha@dtu.dk

About the European Inventor Award

European Inventor Award is one of Europe’s most prestigious innovation awards. Launched by EPO in 2006, it honours individual inventors and teams of inventors whose groundbreaking innovations provide answers to some of the greatest challenges of our time.

The prize is awarded in five categories: Industry, Research, SMEs, Countries Outside EPO, and Lifetime Achievement.

Marco Donolato, who has a PhD from DTU and co-founded the DTU-based startup BluSense Diagnostics, has been nominated for the 2021 European Inventor Award in the ‘Research’ category, along with his team.

The nomination is for the company’s new testing device, which detects infectious diseases in a few minutes. The device has the potential to help health workers save millions of lives in low-income countries struggling with diseases such as dengue fever and the Zika virus.

Taking a classic engineering approach, the team modified an optical Blu-ray pickup of the kind used in DVD players so it can be used to detect light scattered by magnetic nanoparticles grouped around targeted antibodies. This relatively simple and inexpensive method can improve the diagnosis of dengue, Zika virus or SARS-CoV-2 from a single drop of blood.

Research fusion with a new approach to diagnoses

Marco Donolato began his career by exploring how magnetic fields could be used to manipulate nanoparticles so they bind to specific biological targets. He used this expertise with Professor Mikkel Fougt Hansen, former physicist at DTU, and Professor Paolo Vavassori from the CIC nanoGUNE research centre in Spain to develop a device that uses magnetic nanoparticles and an optical reader found in standard Blu-ray players.

"The innovative step was to combine what I learned about nanoparticle dynamics in Denmark with the optical components I studied and developed in Spain."

Marco Donolato

The new testing apparatus can quickly diagnose infectious diseases, which has proven to be highly topical during the global corona pandemic.

The invention blends research expertise from the fields of physics, optical technology, and microfluidics to harness what Marco Donolato calls “Immuno-Magnetic Assay (IMA) technology”.

“The innovative step was to combine what I learned about nanoparticle dynamics in Denmark with the optical components I studied and developed in Spain,” says Marco Donolato.

The winners of the EPO’s 2021 Innovation Prize will be announced on June 17.