A SBIR Phase I contract was awarded to Baebies, Inc. for $299,999.0 USD from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and National Institutes of Health.
Development of Diagnostics to Differentiate HIV Infection from Vaccine-Induced Seropositivity: The overarching goal of this program is to support the development of new serological and nucleic acid assays that can identify HIV infection while avoiding false-positive results due to vaccine-induced seropositivity (VISP), with high sensitivity and specificity. These next generation assays should be developed to address one or all applications/indications of HIV tests, namely: (1) laboratory based tests; ((2) point-of-care and clinical practices; and (3) self-testing. This contract aims to develop a novel diagnostic platform that automates a HIV-1 qualitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) test together with two direct antibody binding assays to differentiate HIV-1 infection from VISP.