A modified Blue-Ray optical pick-up, used to detect scattered light from magnetic nanoparticles clustered around target antibodies, to improve the diagnosis of diseases such as Dengue fever, Zika or SARS-CoV-2 from a single drop of blood. With this device, the Italian engineer Marco Donolato, Milanese, 30, startupper and former researcher at the University of Copenhagen was chosen by the Epo (the European Patent Office) among the finalists of the European Inventor Award 2021 – the Oscar of patents – for the “Research” category.
He will contend for the prize to the Austro / Swiss duo of Robert Grass and Wendelin Stark (inventors of a foolproof data storage method that encapsulates DNA strands in tiny silica spheres) and the French Mathias Fink and Mickael Tanter (who have invented a new method of medical imaging through non-invasive ultrasound that allows doctors to spare patients painful biopsies.
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An “international” path
Milanese, born in 1983, studied at the Liceo Scientifico Volta and graduated in Engineering from the Milan Polytechnic, Donolato then followed a master’s degree in engineering physics, before completing a PhD in micro and nanotechnology at the Politecnico di Milano and the Technical University of Denmark. Donolato spent a year (2012) at CIC nanoGUNE in Spain, as a research and development scientist, before returning to Copenhagen. In 2013 he also spent some time at the Sinica Academy of Taiwan and was a visiting researcher and in 2014 he was invited researcher at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience in Brisbane, Australia. In 2014, together with Filippo Bosco he co-founded BluSense Diagnostics in Copenhagen, Denmark.
How does it work
Combining his experience with that of Professor Mikkel Fougt Hansen, a physicist at the Technical University of Denmark and Professor Paolo Vavassori, an electronic engineer, working at CIC nanoGUNE in Spain, (both accredited as co-inventors), Donolato has developed a device that uses magnetic nanoparticles and an optical reader (the kind found in standard Blu-ray players) to quickly diagnose infectious diseases. The device combines interdisciplinary research skills between physics, optical technology and microfluidics to create an approach that exploits what Donolato calls “Immuno-Magnetic Assay (IMA)” technology.
The device developed has two components: the disposable “ViroTrack” cartridges, which contain the reagents and microfluidic channels necessary to automate the different dosage phases and a small optical reader called BluBox, which processes the cartridges.