Marya Lieberman

Research Interests

Paper Analytical Devices

My lab designs paper analytical devices (PADs) to solve a host of analytical problems in low resource settings. We create millifluidic structures such as solution channels, reagent storage areas, and mixing zones on paper or nitrocellulose, and we develop chemical color reactions that work in mild conditions. This enables us to automate operations that would normally be carried out with glassware in a lab setting. Some ongoing technical goals are improving quantification of the target analytes, broadening the targets to include “biological” drugs, integrating PADs with vibrational spectroscopy and LCMS, and manufacturability/commercialization. User-centered design and field testing are integral to our projects, and researchers in my group currently do part of their work in community settings in the US and in Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia, or Cameroon. Tracking and analysis of large sample sets is also a common feature of these projects, and most researchers in the group learn to use R, Matlab, or Python to analyze spectra, sample metadata, or PAD images. Our PADs have been trialed in Bangladesh, Britain, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Israel, Kenya, Laos, Liberia, Malawi, Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and the US, and by organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, SIDAI, and the US Pharmacopia.

Two current areas of focus are chemotherapy drug quality and opioid harm reduction.

1) In many low- and middle-income countries, chemotherapy drugs are becoming more available, but the outcomes for patients are much worse than in high-income countries. There are increasing concerns that poor quality chemo drugs are responsible for many of these bad outcomes. My group developed chemoPADs to screen the quality of chemo drugs at the point of care, before they are administered to patients; this project involves collaborators from UND and four countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

2) In the US, the unregulated supply of illicit street drugs is associated with over 100,000 overdose deaths per year. My lab is DEA registered to conduct research on controlled substances such as fentanyl, xylazine, and other overdose hazards. We work with harm reduction organizations in multiple states to monitor the components of street drugs, detect emerging highly potent opioids, and check the quality of immunoassay test strips used to detect overdose hazards.