“That membrane was key to collecting the nucleic acids and concentrating them so that we can get the sensitivity that we are showing with this diagnostic,” says Lee, one of the lead authors of the study.
‘A New CRISPR-based tool can detect the novel coronavirus from the saliva samples. The device can be easily programmed to detect new variants as soon as they emerge.’
Finally, they designed the new device ‘minimally instrumented SHERLOCK (miSHERLOCK),’ which can act as an entirely self-contained diagnostic that requires no other equipment. The device produces a fluorescent readout which can help any common person to understand the result in case of viral infection.
“We demonstrated that our platform can be programmed to detect new variants that emerge and that we could repurpose it quite quickly. In this study, we targeted the U.K., South African, and Brazilian variants, but you could readily adapt the diagnostic platform to address the Delta variant and other ones that are emerging,” highlights James Collins, senior author of the study.
The only limitation of the device at present is its cost, as it takes about $15 to get assembled, but the team believes that their device could be produced at a price as low as $2 to $3 per device if approved by the FDA and manufactured at large scale.
The research behind the development of this device has been published as a peer-reviewed publication in the journal Science Advances.
Source: Medindia
