Grant: Project Grant

The pandemic deeply impacted health, social, and economic institutions and highlighted the importance of robust and resilient health systems, while demonstrating that de-centralizing access to the tools of health care provides important advantages. It is through this lens that we propose to tackle key challenges in deploying point-of-need diagnostics for infectious disease, but also to develop diagnostic tools more broadly for patient health. At-home testing with rapid antigen tests (RDTs) were accessible but lacked the sensitivity of lab-based RT-qPCR. There are well-defined challenges that have limited the deployment of such molecular diagnostics outside the lab, including: bulky instrumentation, technical expertise, and sample preparation (e.g. nucleic acid extraction). We propose to combine our expertise in low-cost fluidics and low-burden molecular diagnostics to tackle these challenges. To do this, we will extend two next-generation isothermal diagnostic methods from our groups that provide RT-qPCR equivalent detection in 25-45 minutes to point-of-need testing. This will include the integration of these molecular tests into a low-cost and portable device for simple operation at-home or in the clinic. Other technical advances will include assay multiplexing (testing for a panel of nucleic acid targets), miRNA and single nucleotide mutation detection, and quantification of non-nucleic acid analytes. Looking ahead, the strain on healthcare systems underscores the need to augment access to testing, whether by physicians or patients, with the goal of improving our ability provide health assessments independent of social, economic, or geographic factors. To demonstrate these technologies, we will develop multiplexed, point-of-care tests for emerging tick-borne infections in Canada, mosquito-borne infections in global settings, as well as miRNA biomarkers for clinical triage of sepsis patients, and low-burden testing small molecule analytes (sodium).