New tablet-sized devices can profile multiple COVID-19 antibodies and biomarkers at the same time

The test method can distinguish severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Type with 100% accuracy to predict case severity and resistance to variants.

A biomedical engineer at Duke University in the United States has developed a device that detects coronavirus disease (COVID-19) antibodies and a biomarker that distinguishes between antibodies produced in response to SARS-CoV-2 and four other antibodies. Developed. Coronavirus With perfect accuracy.

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Newly adapted platforms can be crucial in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants

A flexible, cost-effective and accurate “D4 assay” platform has been adapted by Duke University scientists to help distinguish infection patterns from various variants of SARS-CoV-2.

The “D4 Assay” describes a platform for point-of-care clinical diagnostics based on four Ds. Specifically, the D4 assay contains four consecutive events: (2) Dissolution (reagent printed on the chip); (3) Diffusion (entire surface); (4) Detection (binding event).

D4 technology uses a polymer brush coating that acts as a kind of non-stick coating to prevent anything other than the desired biomarker from sticking to the test slides when wet, making the screening process extremely sensitive. It provides a very effective particle filter. In fact, D4’s major antibody (Ab) is composed of microarrays that can be quantified with picomolar sensitivity within 30 minutes.

The current version of the platform does not require electricity to process. With just one drop of blood and biomolecular lubricant, automated tests run in minutes, with results that can be read by a detector about the size of a very thick iPad.

Recently, the platform has been shown to detect Ebola infection one day earlier than the standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. And now, researchers say the results show how flexible the technology is to adapt to other current and future illnesses, including SARS-CoV-2.

It took six years to develop the D4 assay, but when WHO declared the outbreak of a pandemic, we started to compress all that work into months and how the test would be a public health tool. I was able to find out if it could be used for. ” “Our tests are designed to achieve both adaptability and a true point of care,” said Ashtosh Chilkoti, a prominent professor of Alan L. Pehrsonov and chair of Duke’s biomedical engineering. The diagnosis will be most useful. “

A team of researchers has come to work to adapt the D4 assay to COVID-19. They showed that this test was able to distinguish between antibodies produced in response to SARS-CoV-2 and the other four coronaviruses with 100% accuracy.

Data was procured in three parts of SARS-CoV-2 for testing Effectiveness of Assay; subunit of Spike protein, Binding domains within peplomer and nucleocapsid proteins that package viral RNA.

The results found antibodies in all 31 tested patients, reporting 41 false positives from healthy individuals and antibodies from 18 samples from 4 other coronavirus-infected individuals. I showed that I did.

An important tool for identifying, tracking and addressing the emergence of new variants

“There are many questions from people about whether they are protected from new variants of COVID-19. Our tests can answer some of them,” says working at the Chilkoti lab, which developed the chip. Jake Heggestad, a PhD student, said. test.

Our platform should be able to distinguish whether we have antibodies that can neutralize the new mutants of concern, or if those antibodies are not protective against the new mutants, “the team said. Stated.

Based on preliminary findings, researchers are now wondering if this easy-to-use, energy-independent point of care device can be used to predict a person’s immunity to the severity of COVID-19 infection or variants. I’m trying to judge. Virus.

It is clear that adapting the assay can prove to be particularly valuable in tracking the appearance of potential mutants, especially in areas of high infection rate.

As we are platform builders, we are working to show how we can easily modify this technology to do a lot of things, “said David Kinnamon, a graduate student who developed a liquid processing system for testing. Stated. A single platform can act as a diagnostic, assess the immune response after infection, and predict the outcome of the disease. There aren’t many tests that can do that. “

Promising results from this study provide new candidates for integration into a broader pilot strategy for current and future disease outbreaks, especially those with high mutation potential or rapid infection. This is especially true because the D4 assay provides a cost-effective and reliable method that can be made widely available.

In fact, Heggestad describes the platform as “very user-friendly and portable.” “Doing all this in a centralized facility like Duke is one thing, except that you can run large-scale tests and get excellent and sensitive results in remote locations around the world. That’s it. “

Therefore, the best way to integrate such tests on a larger scale remains a challenge.