Partial NSF info of grant application date of Oct

Partial NSF info of grant application date of Oct 2017.

"The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit research applications for projects focused on the development of culture-independent, rapid, sensitive, and specific medical diagnostics that identify select antimicrobial-resistant bacterial pathogens and determine their antimicrobial susceptibility and/or resistance.
The primary goals of the new diagnostics are to improve patient outcomes and facilitate antibacterial stewardship, thereby reducing selective pressure on current therapeutics and preserving their usefulness. A secondary goal of developing the new diagnostics is to facilitate enrollment of appropriate infected patients in future clinical trials. The diagnostics will be able to identify the causative pathogen and associate drug susceptibility/resistance going into the trial, improving determination of efficacy of candidate therapeutics. The proposed diagnostic platforms must be supported by proof-of-concept data demonstrating feasibility. Examples of supported research areas include, but are not limited to: assay and prototype optimization; sample preparation, including pathogen concentration; continued development of multiplexed platforms and/or production technologies; adaptation of products or platform technologies to new applications; software development; process development; manufacturing; and diagnostic validation."

"For the purposes of this FOA, the following diagnostic performance parameters are of greatest importance:
Rapid: Ideal diagnostic test time of approximately 3 hours for identification of species and determination of susceptibility profiles, which includes the time-required to process the clinical sample (if appropriate) through detection and delivery of the final test result;
Sensitive: Sensitivity should be equivalent to or exceed current FDA-cleared standards for proposed targets from the same sample type;
Specific: Specificity should be equivalent to or exceed current FDA-cleared standards for proposed targets from the same sample type;
Easy-to-use: Integrated, closed sample-to-answer system with automated data analyses and/or result presentation and with minimal operator training and expertise required;
Cost-effective: Projected production and operating costs should be consistent with commonly used platforms for detecting infectious disease-causing pathogens; and
Where appropriate, enable multiplexed differential detection of multiple pathogens."