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Sept. 9, 2004 – MesoSystems Technology Inc. has a number of products in its pipeline, one an upgrade, and two in beta testing. The company, headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M., began shipping its new and improved BioCapture 650 in June, said CEO Charles Call.
The firm’s upgraded product has been completely re-engineered from the ground up, he said, and recently won an innovation award for new products and technology from R&D Magazine.
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The BioCapture 650 samples air, looking for possible toxic threats like anthrax, plague, smallpox and tularemia. It collects micron and submicron airborne particles, as well as soluble vapors, from indoor or outdoor sites. Technicians responding to an alarm can use the capture tool when they arrive at a site.
The key to the product is its integrated, disposable collector cartridge. It has been improved by its higher flow rate, achieved with a rotating impactor, fluid chamber, fluid lines and sample vial pre-assembled in one cartridge, so the system is immediately ready to use.
“It does about ten times better in concentrating particles out of the air,” than the original product, Call said, “It uses a technology called rotating impaction that has a high-speed fan to sweep particles out of the air, then rinses fan blades to extract particles into the fluid.”
The disposable cartridge eliminates the possibility of contamination and cross-contamination between samples, making it useful for emergency responses by Hazmat, firefighting and law enforcement teams.
“We do a lot of small tech in nearly everything we do, but that’s not the selling feature,” Call said. With injection-molded parts, the product can produce sampling results at a lower cost and with a higher reliability.
He cites three popular uses for the product. First, technicians at the incident can have field-testing equipment, so they can analyze samples on the spot. A second use for the sample is its ability to confirm a previous test. The third is for forensics for evidence.
Beta testing for a new bio-aerosol sensor called AirSentinel is nearly completed, Call said. MesoSystems has built 20 units that are installed in critical infrastructure buildings on both coasts, and in Washington D.C. and New York City. Brand-new technologies are incorporated in several parts of the AirSentinel.
“It is an optical sensor that uses microfluidics for particle capture and size sorting. The optical piece of it uses state-of-the-art ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes made by Cree Inc., a world leader in LEDs,” Call said.
Durham, N.C.-based Cree developed these particular LEDs under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract called the Semiconductor UV Optical Sources (SUVOS) program for developing a nanofabrication-based light source.
The SUVOS LED is a small-niche application for Cree, since the company’s primary market is backlighting LEDs for cell phones, according to Cree company spokesperson, Cindy Merrill.
The AirSentinel is a continuous monitor, much like a smoke alarm, that looks for bioparticles in the air. The device uses optical scanning, so there are no samples or fluids consumed that would drive up costs. The product can be tied into a smoke-alarm system, so it can send an alarm if it detects smoke or bioparticles in the air.
A third product that may be ready for beta testing in October, Call said, involves lab-on-a-chip technology. This multi-tasking chip performs sample preparation and cleanup, label and target isolation and label and readout tasks on one card-sized chip.
“We’re also working on a biosensor technology that is an advanced microfluidics-based immunoassay,” he said.
Call, who was formerly associated with Pacific Northwest National Labs in central Washington, has moved MesoSystems’ corporate headquarters to Albuquerque, N.M. The company employs 25 people, and still does some manufacturing in Richland and Kennewick, Wash., where the firm originated.
Ardesta LLC, the parent company of Small Times Media, is an investor in MesoSystems.