A new forensic science technique which could revolutionise the way police forces detect illegal drugs has been pushed towards commercialisation with help from Cambridge University’s i-teams programme.
A University of East Anglia spin-out Intelligent Fingerprinting had developed a technique which uses the sweat in fingerprints to identify a number of illegal drugs, but needed help in getting it to market. The company turned to Cambridge University’s i-Teams programme for help in finding possible uses for the technique, and recommending which have the greatest commercial potential.
The i-Teams programme was set up in Cambridge in 2006 by Amy Mokady, a local entrepreneur and business angel, and is a collaboration between the Institute for Manufacturing and the Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club.
The programme, based on one at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, uses multi-disciplinary teams of students to analyse the commercial potential of an emerging, breakthrough technology.
The new technique uses the sweat in fingerprints to identify a number of illegal drugs, prescription drugs and drug metabolites, applying antibodies and simple imaging techniques that allows a range of compounds to be detected quickly and easily. The antibody binds to the substance present in the fingerprint, and allows it to be optically imaged.
The method has already been shown to detect cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine and three different narcotic drugs. Applications range from detecting drugs from fingerprints found at crime scenes, to screening machinery operators and prison inmates for drugs. Working with the i-Team, Intelligent Fingerprinting was able to highlight its potential in institutional drug screening programmes, for example in the military, prisons and hospitals, and in homeland security applications, and gathered positive feedback from a range of industry experts.
The company plans to work with some of the world’s leading crime scene investigation centres to validate the techniques, before making the technology commercially available.
Jerry Walker CEO, of Intelligent Fingerprinting, said the project had several benefits, “We were pleased that the i-Team project approached the project from such a broad range of individual perspectives and knowledge.”
“As a consequence, the project output greatly expanded the potential of our technology and benchmarked the size of key markets in illicit drug screening, including high security prisons and broad screening potential across homeland defence, in a way that adds credibility to our plans and exposed the company to Cambridge Angels and other potential investors.”
Amy Mokady , i-Teams Director said this was a landmark project in a number of ways as it is a technology with huge global potential. “It was also the first time we had ever worked with a technology developed outside of Cambridge University. It was very gratifying to see how the value of working with us had been recognised beyond the confines of Cambridge.”
For more details on i-Teams see http://www.iteamsonline.org
i-Teams is funded from a number of sources, including the Hauser Forum IdeaSpace, the EPSRC, the CIKC and Marks & Clerk.
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