# Development and validation of a novel point-of-care technology for rapid non-targeted identification of emerging opioid and other drug threats

> **NIH NIH UG1** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2024 · $618,092

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
The North American overdose crisis remains at epidemic levels, with over 1 million lives
lost over the past decade. This crisis is primarily driven by the emergence of high-
potency opioids such as fentanyl, in unregulated (“street”) drug markets. However, the
volatility of these markets has also led to the emergence of other even more potent
opioids such as carfentanil and nitazene-class opioids, along with adulterants such as
benzodiazepines. These emerging drug threats produce complex overdose
presentations and difficulties in overdose reversal, all of which contribute to overdose
mortality. Drug checking services, which provide individuals with analytic information
regarding the presence of compounds in drugs of unknown composition, are increasingly
employed in North America to prevent overdose mortality during the era of high-potency
synthetic opioid contamination. However, current efforts to implement and expand
access to drug checking services are hampered, primarily because current available
technologies have logistical, technical, and cost-related barriers that impede their
feasibility as point-of-care interventions. This is exacerbated by the need for ongoing
assay development to ensure that drug checking technologies can continue to
accurately detect and identify novel high-potency drug threats in North American drug
markets. Meeting these needs is critical to advance the effectiveness of drug checking at
the population level, particularly for drug checking service providers, individuals who use
drugs, and medical examiners undertaking forensic investigations of overdose mortality.
The aim of the current project is therefore to develop and validate a novel point-of-care
technology, known as DoseCheck, for rapid non-targeted identification of emerging drug
threats. Specifically, we will: 1) validate the DoseCheck system’s capacity to differentiate
between and within classes of opioid, stimulant, depressant, and anesthetic compounds
in non-targeted analyses of unregulated drugs; 2) undertake timed exercises to evaluate
the capacity of our team to rapidly adapt the DoseCheck system to detect and
differentiate a novel emerging drug threat; and 3) test the capacity of the DoseCheck
system to identify and differentiate distinct opioid metabolites within human biomatrices.
Achieving these aims will generate high impact and highly translational findings that will
support the expansion of adaptive, analytically sophisticated, and low-cost point-of-care
drug checking services and thereby contribute to a reduction in overdose mortality.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10932243
- **Project number:** 5UG1DA059406-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Drew Alexander Hall
- **Activity code:** UG1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $618,092
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-30 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10932243

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10932243, Development and validation of a novel point-of-care technology for rapid non-targeted identification of emerging opioid and other drug threats (5UG1DA059406-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10932243. Licensed CC0.

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