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Indian American gets $2.7M NIH grant for Syphilis test innovation
Penn State professor Dipanjan Pan received the four-year grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to support his work
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Malvika Choudhary - Sat, 10, May 2025
- 14:54 EDT
- 79
Dipanjan Pan / Penn State
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $2.7 million grant to an Indian American researcher to develop the first rapid, comprehensive diagnostic test capable of confirming active syphilis infection in under 10 minutes.
Penn State professor Dipanjan Pan received the four-year grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to support his work in collaboration with clinical researchers at Penn State Health, Carle Foundation Hospital, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
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The project aims to transform syphilis diagnosis by creating a one-step confirmatory test that integrates detection of both treponemal and nontreponemal antibodies.
“Syphilis cases in the United States are increasing at an alarming rate, and the need for a rapid diagnostic test that can quickly inform treatment and management decisions is desperately needed,” said Pan, who holds the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professorship in Nanomedicine at Penn State.
Often called the "great imitator," syphilis mimics symptoms of other sexually transmitted infections, complicating diagnosis. The bacterium Treponema pallidum triggers immune responses that produce two distinct types of antibodies.
While treponemal-specific antibodies can persist for life—even after treatment—non-treponemal antibodies are more closely linked to active infection. Currently, no FDA-approved rapid test can distinguish between the two, requiring multiple tests and multi-day lab processing.
“There are only two syphilis rapid tests approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but they detect only treponemal-specific antibodies, which could be from a decades-old infection that was already successfully treated,” Pan said.
Pan’s proposed platform uses electrochemical sensors made from graphene—an ultra-thin, highly sensitive material—to detect both types of antibodies simultaneously. Early studies using commercial blood serum samples showed the sensors could deliver accurate results in under 10 minutes.
“This is the first study using electrochemical sensors for an integrated assay for highly sensitive, rapid, point-of-care detection of both treponemal and nontreponemal antibodies needed to accurately diagnose active syphilis infection,” Pan said.
The innovation builds on earlier work funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and conducted with researchers including Parikshit Moitra—now an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research—and Penn State graduate student Ketan Dighe.
Pan and his team plan to develop the technology into a user-friendly diagnostic device, similar to an at-home glucose meter, which could deliver results from a simple blood sample. The researchers are actively seeking commercial partners to help bring the platform to market.
Collaborating investigators on the project include Casey Pinto at Penn State Health, Carla Rafferty and Tor Jensen at Carle Foundation Hospital, and Barbara Van Der Pol at UAB, a leading expert in sexually transmitted disease diagnostics.
Pan began his career as an intellectual property analyst at GE’s John F. Welch Technology Centre in 2005. He joined Washington University School of Medicine in 2007, focusing on cardiovascular research. In 2013, he moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and co-founded two biotech startups—InnSight Technology (2014) and KaloCyte (2016). He later held faculty roles at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, before joining Penn State.
Pan earned his doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Technology. He pursued postdoctoral research at Washington University in St. Louis, where he specialized in nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems.
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