Abstract

Rapid Paper-Based Point-of-Care Pathogen Diagnostics for the Developed and Developing Worlds

Paul Yager, Professor/Vice Chair, University of Washington

Whether to guide treatment of an individual’s infection, or to control the outbreak of a pandemic, there is an urgent need for low-cost rapid diagnostic devices capable of identifying the cause of infectious disease that that work wherever the person is, not just in a centralized laboratory.  “Ubiquitous diagnostics” can bring the best diagnostic capabilities to homes, physicians’ office laboratories and pharmacies in the developed world, or to places in the developing world where nothing is available now.  We have been pursuing microfluidics-based tools and systems for pathogen identification in human samples, most recently in an inexpensive instrument-free single-use disposable format.  The central effort today is to utilize capillary action in porous materials to eliminate the need for pumps and other equipment to control fluid flow.  By coupling the chemical testing with cell phones, critical health data can be analyzed rapidly and anywhere, and the best healthcare decisions can be made for patients, for regional healthcare systems, and for global health.  Three analytical approaches have been considered:  Identification and quantification of 1) antibodies specific to pathogens, 2) proteins of the pathogens, and 3) nucleic acid sequences derived from the pathogens.  To be presented are recent results on simple paper-based systems to support ultrasensitive detection of proteins and nucleic acids.  All projects are aimed at producing clinically useful tools for point-of-care medicine.