SOUTH BEND — Les Ivie was working for Honeywell when he first came across the technology that eventually could speed up the average diagnosis of flu, strep throat and other illnesses as well as let people know if local lakes are E. coli-contaminated in a matter of minutes.
The president of F Cubed, the eighth company and newest tenant at Innovation Park at Notre Dame, was so enthralled with the potential of the technology, he left Honeywell.
“Honeywell was going through a period where everybody in 2008 was pulling in their horns,” he said, recalling how working for that company he first crossed paths with the technology developed by Hsueh-Chia Chang, Bayer professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “I looked at it and could not walk away. So, I started the company.”
At Innovation Park, two new employees, along with Chang, the company’s chief scientific adviser, will work on a prototype of a hand-held instrument that provides direct, point-of-care measurement to identify contaminated drinking water and infectious pathogens in human blood and fluid samples.
A prototype will arrive within weeks at Innovation Park. And it can be put to use almost immediately measuring environmental contamination of water, Ivie said.Medical applications, because of FDA testing, will require a “fairly long road,” he said.
The current kit is about the size of a laptop computer. But by next spring the company hopes to develop a hand-held unit at Innovation Park.
The beauty of the device is that it can save time and money and can be used by people with minimal training.
Instead of testing for E. coli bacteria in Lake Michigan and waiting for days for the results, the results can come in 15 minutes without ever leaving the site, Ivie said.
The same goes for a visit to the doctor’s office or perhaps a pharmacy where a nurse practitioner or a doctor will be able to administer the test and get results without the patient ever leaving.“Identification of DNA for medical diagnostics, environmental testing and Homeland Security uses are currently limited to a specific process,” said Ivie. "Currently, a sample is collected in a doctor’s office or from a lake or river and then transferred to a laboratory where more testing is required.
“The whole process often takes more than 24 hours. The F Cubed platform is able to complete the entire process from sample to measurement in as little as 15 minutes in any location, resulting in speedier and more cost-efficient diagnoses, which ultimately leads to faster treatment.”
It can also be used by the Department of Homeland Security to detect things like anthrax, he said.
Chang, who is also the company’s chief scientific adviser, is a member of Notre Dame’s Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics initiative and the director of Notre Dame’s Center for Microfluidics and Medical Diagnostics.Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics is an interdisciplinary effort to create diagnostic and therapeutic systems that address some of society’s most pressing health and environmental needs. Nearly 40 Notre Dame faculty and staff are involved in the initiative, which is organized into eight distinct research programs.
“We can’t do the work without being close to the people who did the inventing, and that’s at Notre Dame,” Ivie said. “It’s truly where all the hard work will be done.”
The technology is licensed to F Cubed from the university.
Another factor was Innovation Park, even if it will require constant road time for Ivie from his Hawthorn Woods office, near Chicago.
“Innovation Park is one of the most state-of-the-art facilities available in the U.S. right now,” Ivie said. “It’s like moving into a world-class lab. There are no differences in terms of logistics or availability of technology if I was right here in the heart of Chicago.”The plan is to eventually mass produce the product in the South Bend area, Ivie said.