Rapid point of care diagnosis for covid-19

Corona virus: A beast to be tamed

Comment 1

# Inspiration:

Covid-19 is public health emergency..Being scientist its social responsibility to develop a product that could be helpful for all. In sudden outbreaks many times we fall short of proper methods of diagnosis and therapy. In current scenario to deal with this highly infectious virus rapid diagnosis is utmost needed to identify the infected ones to prevent further infections. We are proposing a point of care rapid diagnostic method for specific detection of covid-19 in nasal or mouth swab samples or blood can also be used. We are tackling two problems: Lack of trained manpower to perform the tests and lack of sophisticated labs in many parts of the world. With are truly point of care robust system we can run the test anywhere anytime without any specific need and data can be sent to cloud server and real time monitoring is possible. Screening and diagnosis of large population is a major challenge and there as a need to develop portable rapid and accurate systems to handle this issue. Like in a cluster of SARS cases in a Hong Kong apartment block, investigators found that SARS-CoV nucleic acid can also be detected from stools of the patients (Cyranoski, 2003). So there is a great concern on the disinfection of SARS-CoV in patient excrement and wastewater. So we are trying to develop a rapid testing kit for detecting sewage as well coming out of quarantine centers where asymptomatic cases are there or During the symptomatic period and After the symptomatic period / during clinical recovery.

What it does:

As IgG and IgM based kits for detection are not efficient and lacks sensitivity and specificity that restricts their use as screening devices also. We are developing a portable detection kit targeting other virus proteins. For emerging pathogens, real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is the primary mode of diagnosis.Molecular diagnosis using real-time RT-PCR takes at least 2-3 h, including preparation of viral RNA. Sample preparation for RNA can affect diagnostic accuracy also. Hence, highly sensitive diagnostic methods based on viral proteins without sample preparation steps are necessary for rapid and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19. We are targeting viral proteins in samples and extending our existing platform Omni-sens to develop a rapid and sensitive sensor for covid-19.

How I built it:

We have a dedicated team of experts from different interdisciplinary fields and our motivation is "affordable healthcare for all". We have developed a robust platform initially for cancer and neonatal sepsis and now we are extending it for covid-19. Expertise in Medical and Environmental Biotechnology , Healthcare Business management

Challenges I ran into:

  1. As a start up funds availability is major challenge. We have received Govt. of India grants to develop the products and thankful for their support to take our work ahead as we are a commercial entity with a social angle involved and we are working to bring scientific advancements to the last man of society with our affordable diagnostic kits.
    2.Collecting Samples and working lab permission
  2. Staff health safety

Accomplishments that I'm proud of: We have received govt grants and recognition for our work on social aspects and environmental applications of our work.
We have great team of committed persons to fight the beast

What I learned:

Science is a continuous journey of learning and we should have faith on the idea we propose. Self motivation is the most sorted virtue to sail our boat in difficult times.

What's next for Rapid point of care diagnosis for covid-19:

Scientific advancement has changed the face of diagnosis. We have learnt that any outbreak can create a massive damage that happened during covid-19 and approximately 2 lakhs people have lost their lives and a huge economic impact world is facing. Now within a short span of time many diagnostic kits have been developed based on different aspects and its a good sign that the lesson learnt from this covid crisis have made us prepared for the future. If we consider only corona, we are expecting that successful deployment of our kit at hotspots and crowded places would be helpful to identify many unreported cases as prevention is only cure to check the spread of virus further. Recent studies have showed that corona traces are found in water bodies and sewage waste as well so our system can be deployed to check the virus presence in such locations also.
We will standardize and Validate Our solution in next few weeks to help governments to manage crises efficiently.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates