Ben-Gurion University designs a cheap, fridge-free blood probe for rheumatic heart disease

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a polymer-based probe that could one day make it simpler and cheaper to test for rheumatic heart disease, a leading cause of heart damage and death among young people in low-income countries. The university announced the work on 15 October 2026. It was published in the journal ACS Sensors by a team led by Prof. Ayelet David of the School of Biomedical Research.

Rheumatic heart disease begins with an untreated strep throat. The immune system's response to the infection can scar the heart valves, often with few symptoms until the damage is permanent. The World Health Organization estimates it affected about 55 million people and caused roughly 360,000 deaths in 2021, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. Diagnosis usually depends on a heart ultrasound, which many remote clinics lack, and blood tests that rely on antibodies, which are costly and must be shipped and stored cold.

The Ben-Gurion probe replaces the antibody with a synthetic polymer, a long chain-like molecule that carries a short peptide designed to grab a specific marker of inflammation, together with fluorescent dye. When the marker binds, the probe gives off light that can be read with basic laboratory equipment. In tests the probe reliably measured E-selectin, a marker linked to the disease, in spiked serum samples, while a second marker, VCAM-1, proved harder to detect in serum. Because the peptide can be swapped, the same backbone could be adapted to other blood markers and other inflammatory diseases.

The researchers stress that this is early laboratory work. The probe has not yet been tested on blood from patients, and no single marker can yet diagnose the disease on its own. The study was funded by the Leducq Foundation through PRIMA, an international consortium of researchers in the United States, Israel, Brazil, Tanzania, Uganda, India, Nepal and Canada searching for early blood markers of the disease. Its co-author, the late Prof. Robert Levine of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard, led the consortium until recently.