AuCoin & Kozel Laboratories

Accurate diagnostics have the potential to affect health care decisions to a degree well out of proportion to their cost. It has been estimated that diagnostics account for only 2% of the cost of health care, but affect 60-70% of the treatment decisions. In resource-limited settings, the impact of diagnostic tests that can be provided at the immediate point of care is even greater. Our goal is to provide diagnostic solutions for this practice environment.

We focus on diseases where alternative means for diagnosis such as culture or use of molecular probes are ineffective, not practical or do not meet the needs for point-of-care use. Our approach is detection of biomarkers of disease—molecules that are produced by microbes, tumors or other conditions that are unique to the disease or condition. The test platform is an immunoassay in which antibodies are used for biomarker detection. We discover the biomarkers and develop the antibodies that are central to assay construction.

Located on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, the AuCoin & Kozel Laboratory is a research and development unit within the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.