With evolving roles for the U.S. military creating new needs for Special Operating Forces (SOF) medics for improved infectious disease diagnostics to use in caring for both their fellow servicemembers and for individuals in local populations, Wave 80 and its partner Squid Labs delivered the technology to fully automate assays for which medics were previously required to perform multiple steps manually.  Hands-on time saved can be devoted to providing better care and to maintaining situational awareness.

As the unique vaccine development challenges posed by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) came into focus, new approaches to stemming the tide of the HIV epidemic emerged as a high priority.  Based on promising results around transmission dynamics from small studies in high-risk patient populations, scientists sought a highly detailed understanding of viral propagation in the first days post-infection, and turned to Wave 80 for help.   Working under contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, we developed improved methods and tools for amplifying and detecting viral genomic material that filled key capability gaps.  This work ultimately contributed to the development of pre-exposure prophylaxis, an intervention widely credited with significantly reducing new HIV infections.

For diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, detecting even tiny amounts of viral genomic material can be critical, and samples like sputum, whole blood and nasopharyngeal swabs each pose significant challenges.  Wave 80 and its development partners Boston University and the Fraunhofer Institute Center for Manufacturing Innovation developed a suite of high-performance sample acquisition and preparation modules to address a wide range of these challenges, including accommodating high patient-to-patient viscosity variability in sputum and accommodating hematocrit effects blood.

In type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, accurately measuring levels of autoantibodies  at different stages of disease progression is essential from the standpoint of both individual patient care and development of new therapies.  Working with UCSF endocrinologist Stephen Gitelman, Wave 80 has developed a suite of homogeneous assay methods that address poor binding epitope availability and other persistent challenges detection and measurement of autoantibodies.  As plate-format versions of these assays approach release into the clinic, work is ramping up on systems that combine these new assay methods with Wave 80's liquid micropiston technology to yield even more compelling solutions for patients and drug developers in autoimmune disease.