Point-of-care isothermal nucleic acid amplification platform for COVID-19 diagnostics in resource-limited settings

The demand for scalable, rapid and sensitive COVID-19 diagnostics is particularly pressing at present to help contain the spread of infection and prevent overwhelming the capacity of health systems. While high-income countries have managed to rapidly expand diagnostic capacities, such is not the case in resource-limited settings of low- to medium-income countries. We report the development of an integrated modular centrifugal microfluidic platform costing less than 250 USD to perform loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) of viral RNA directly from heat-inactivated nasopharyngeal swab samples. The platform was validated with a panel of 131 nasopharyngeal swab samples collected from symptomatic COVID-19 patients.
Part of ISBN 9781733419031QC 20230614