Drug Detection from Fingerprints for Medical Testing

Fully Funded PhD Position – University of Surrey, National Physical Laboratory, Intelligent Fingerprinting Limited and Surrey and Borders Mental Health Trust – Drug Detection from Fingerprints

An exciting opportunity has arisen to take part in the prestigious National Physical Laboratory / Surrey studentship scheme, with funding from Intelligent Fingerprinting Limited and collaboration with Surrey and Borders NHS Trust. We are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated individual who can work at the interface between a university mass spectrometry facility, a national measurement laboratory and a rapidly expanding company and the NHS.

Many patients taking pharmaceuticals are doing so in order to control important conditions. In a number of cases, when uncontrolled, these conditions may affect society in significant ways including through impact of patients’ behaviour, risk of infectious disease or high and ongoing costs of reparative treatment. Knowing that these patients are taking their medication has been a long-term challenge which has led in recent years to clinical treatment orders for Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder and other medical conditions. This creates a legal requirement for patients to take the daily medication as prescribed.

Monitoring of these patients for the drugs that they are required to take is impossible without their cooperation. Invasive screening methods reduce testing compliance further and this in turn leads to problems being encountered on a regular basis when medication is not taken effectively. Screening methods are difficult to implement in a dignified manner when they require urine or blood samples. Recent trends in point of care testing are towards more non-invasive, dignified methods.

This project proposes to investigate ambient mass spectrometry techniques for the collection and screening of fingerprints for drug metabolites that are secreted onto the skin when patients take the specific medication. These metabolites are important breakdown products of the medication which appear in sweat shortly after the drug is taken and for some number of hours following medication. The long term objective is to make rapid, point-of-use screening tests for each of these drugs but there is little data to support this development Collection of fingerprints also carries an added advantage with the biometric offering unambiguous identification of the donor. This will perhaps enable patients to collect their own samples at home and send in to a central laboratory.

Please apply online at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/postgraduate/chemistry-phd before 10 May 2017, also sending your CV and cover letter to Melanie Bailey [Email Address Removed].