Joshin Kumar

Pathogen Hunting: My Summer on the Frontlines of Biosensor Development

Pivot 314 Fellowship Internship Experience with Y2X Life Sciences

This summer, I embarked on a journey into the world of Y2X Life Sciences, a startup with a mission that would make even the most ambitious superhero blush: disrupting disease transmission and preventing future pandemics. With more than 74 pandemics and epidemics since 2000—COVID-19, SARS, MERS, Ebola, and Swine Flu, to name a few—it’s safe to say the world needs a new approach to detecting airborne pathogens. Enter Y2X, where the company motto, “Our purpose is to disrupt disease transmission,” is more than just a catchy tagline—it’s a call to arms.

My internship kicked off with a crash course in biosensor development—aka, how to make a tiny piece of tech that can detect pathogens faster than you can say “glutaraldehyde.” Here’s the scoop: Developing a biosensor is a two-day marathon. Day one is all about modifying the surface of the working electrodes of screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs). Sounds fancy, right? Basically, we coat the electrodes with Prussian Blue (PB) and Graphene Oxide (GO) and then apply glutaraldehyde, which acts as a super glue for the antibodies that we drop-cast onto the electrodes. This little concoction then takes an overnight nap in the lab refrigerator, allowing the antibodies to properly bond with the electrode surface.

Day two is where the magic happens. We use our newly modified biosensor to detect pathogens and create a calibration curve. By dipping the SPCEs into different dilutions of pathogen-containing solutions, we measure changes in the electrode surface’s capacitance. The tool of the trade here is Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS)—a mouthful, I know, but it’s essentially how we determine just how sensitive our biosensor is. The goal? To figure out the lower limit of detection and see just how minuscule a pathogen concentration our biosensor can pick up.

But the fun didn’t stop there. The next big project was detecting aerosolized pathogens—a.k.a. pathogens in their airborne ninja form. This involved preparing a small army of modified SPCEs. We then aerosolized stock solution of pathogens and pushed the aerosol droplets into a PBS solution using a wet cyclone, which sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie but is actually a pretty standard aerosol collection technique. This PBS solution contaminated by pathogens was then used to put our biosensors to the test.

One of the most exciting challenges I tackled was designing a prototype for a multiplexed biosensor—a device capable of detecting multiple pathogens simultaneously. This was a key part of our proposal for an ARPA-H grant. It was like designing a Swiss Army knife of biosensors—compact, versatile, and incredibly useful. I did learn a lot about the complexities of sensor design.

Of course, no internship would be complete without a crash course in the business side of things. I helped develop a laboratory-scale budget for the ARPA-H proposal and quickly realized that while the business side is fascinating, my heart truly belongs to the research. It was like being in a relationship where you realize you’re better off as friends—valuable insight for any budding scientist.

In the end, this internship didn’t just teach me about biosensors—it taught me about myself. I’ve learned that even if I don’t know everything (which, spoiler alert, no one does), I can still be an asset to any research team. This experience has also taught me to embrace the unknown and strive for the best outcome, even when the path forward isn’t clear. So, while I may not be ready to take over the world (yet), I’m definitely ready to make a difference, one biosensor at a time.