KAUST team develops new virus testing method
Researchers have developed a new method for testing viruses -including Covid-19 - using magnetic nanoparticles that assess samples from clinical and wastewater sources.
The team at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) said that its centrifuge-free approach is safe, fast, cheap and compatible with magnetic bead-based automated systems that are already used to process hundreds of samples.
COVID-19 is diagnosed by extracting SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA from clinical samples such as nasopharyngeal swabs, and detecting the virus using real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assays.
Due to the scale of the pandemic, shortages could occur in essential supplies for virus testing such as commercial reagents and laboratories that satisfy biosafety requirements. Conventional chemical supplies are also expensive and less accessible to low-income countries and remote healthcare facilities.
“Our silica magnetic nanoparticle-based workflow can be assembled from scratch by any researcher,” said lead author Gerardo Ramos-Mandujano. “It rivals commercial viral-RNA extraction kits while lowering the risk of handling potentially infectious samples.”
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