Point-of-care test for COVID-19 coronavirus diagnosis
Dr. Daniel Kamei is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA. One of the major goals of the Kamei Laboratory at UCLA is to develop novel point-of-care (POC) diagnostics that can lead to better patient management, faster administration of treatments, and improved outbreak prevention.
Current diagnostic measures include point-of-care (POC) tests such as paper-based lateral-flow immunoassays (LFA), which lack in sensitivity and are unable to identify the active state of infection, and gold standard detection methods such as nucleic acid amplification tests, which require expensive laboratory equipment and trained personnel.
Dr. Daniel Kamei and colleagues report a novel, POC, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based immunoassay containing aqueous two-phase systems and polyethylene glycol dimethacrylate hydrogels for target preconcentration, gold nanoparticles for colorimetric detection, and an image analysis software with a smartphone attachment for quantitative results. They demonstrate a proof-of-concept diagnostic device for transferrin (Tf) detection consisting of three components - (1) a hydrogel scaffold to concentrate target biomarkers through phase separation of aqueous two-phase systems, (2) a PDMS scaffold conjugated with anti-Tf antibodies, and (3) an image analysis component - to achieve detection of Tf at concentrations as low as 0.5ng/μL.
This POC diagnosis can be readily adopted to detect SARS-CoV-2 viral antigens. This technology offers an inexpensive (less than $5) and rapid (1 minute) alternative to gold standard diagnostic methods while improving upon the sensitivity of existing POC diagnostic tests.
Additional Information:
Link to Faculty website: http://kameilab.seas.ucla.edu/