March 2011 COSAM E-Newsletter
Chemistry Professors, Students Working on Bringing Better Healthcare
to Africa, Developing Nations
Professor Andres Martinez, center, holds paper
medical test strip prototypes, backed by chemistry
students Kevin Schilling (l) and Anna Lepore (r)
SAN LUIS OBISPO -- A new chemistry professor and his students are working on bringing better health care to Africa and the rest of the developing world through tiny strips of paper.
Chemistry Professor Andres Martinez and undergraduate students Kevin Schilling and Anna Lepore are working to imprint strips of paper with chemicals that could react to body fluids and turn colors in reaction to disease markers.
“We use paper for medical testing because it is cheap, widely available and it wicks fluids,” Martinez explained.
The professor is looking to find a way to create paper medical test strips that would not require refrigeration, trained lab techs, or sophisticated equipment so they could be used in primitive conditions in rural field clinics in developing nations around the world.
Martinez developed the paper test strip idea as part of his graduate research at Harvard University. Upon earning his doctorate in chemistry there, he spent a year touring health clinics in Tanzania with Bienmoyo, a non-profit health foundation, to further his understanding of the need for medical diagnostic devices in developing countries.
Much of Tanzania is poor and rural. Doctors practicing in the countryside often have no access to electricity, refrigeration, or running water. Many also don’t have access to labs, Martinez learned.
The kind of routine medical testing available in the United States is simply not available in much of Tanzania – or in many rural, developing nations, Martinez said.
After arriving at Cal Poly to teach in fall 2010, Martinez set to work on making paper medical test strip prototypes. He and his students are developing different methods of fabricating the test strips, and are studying the combinations of chemicals that could be used to test for specific disease markers.
The strips of paper themselves are smaller than U.S. postage stamps. But once developed, they could mean big changes for rural areas of the world. The project is another example of Cal Poly’s Learn By Doing philosophy in action.
“We’re not necessarily trying to answer a scientific question– we’re trying to solve a problem,” Martinez said. “Our goal is to produce a functioning device.”
Schilling, a chemistry freshman, and Lepore, a chemistry sophomore, say they are fascinated by the project and want to keep working on it. "It's simple yet smart," Schilling said. "It would take a simple thing like paper and turn it into a solution."