Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ning, Bo
• Yu, Tao
• Zhang, Shengwei
• Huang, Zhen
• Tian, Di
• Lin, Zhen
• Niu, Alex
• Golden, Nadia
• Hensley, Krystle
• Threeton, Breanna
• Lyon, Christopher J
• Yin, Xiao-Ming
• Roy, Chad J
• Saba, Nakhle S
• Rappaport, Jay
• Wei, Qingshan
• Hu, Tony Y

Titel

A smartphone-read ultrasensitive and quantitative saliva test for COVID-19

Ist Teil von

• Science advances, 2021-01, Vol.7 (2)

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Point-of-care COVID-19 assays that are more sensitive than the current RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) gold standard assay are needed to improve disease control efforts. We describe the development of a portable, ultrasensitive saliva-based COVID-19 assay with a 15-min sample-to-answer time that does not require RNA isolation or laboratory equipment. This assay uses CRISPR-Cas12a activity to enhance viral amplicon signal, which is stimulated by the laser diode of a smartphone-based fluorescence microscope device. This device robustly quantified viral load over a broad linear range (1 to 10 copies/μl) and exhibited a limit of detection (0.38 copies/μl) below that of the RT-PCR reference assay. CRISPR-read SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) RNA levels were similar in patient saliva and nasal swabs, and viral loads measured by RT-PCR and the smartphone-read CRISPR assay demonstrated good correlation, supporting the potential use of this portable assay for saliva-based point-of-care COVID-19 diagnosis.