IRC Next Steps Plus: A Smartphone Powered mRNA Sequence Detector

南非的主要死因是肺结核（TB）。该国是世界上结核病发病率最高的国家。众所周知，诊断结核病具有挑战性，需要长时间的测试，昂贵的设备或假阴性。在目前可用的诊断测试中，痰液样本的培养测试是最敏感的，但需要至少10天前的结果。对于同时感染艾滋病毒的儿童或病人，痰液往往是难以取得的。更强大的现有技术是昂贵的，笨重的，或需要专门培训的工作人员，阻碍了他们在农村医疗诊所的实施。护理点（POC）测试已经改变了几种疾病的诊断，包括发达地区的艾滋病毒，我们的目标是创建创新的POC测试，旨在在南非实施，快速，准确，具有成本效益的结核病诊断。我们的设计结合了基于纳米材料的方法，以实现灵敏和特异的检测，而微流体工程将支持样品处理和信号放大，以提供最佳的读数。我们还将纳入一个基于智能手机的组件，旨在立即报告结果，并与远程医疗单位或全球医疗机构快速联系，以改善结核病监测。我们将通过分析来自南非和马拉维患者的样本来验证我们的设备。我们将与非洲卫生研究所（AHRI）进行一项小型试点研究，该研究所位于南非结核病和艾滋病流行病的震中夸祖鲁-纳塔尔农村地区。该Plus Award将直接支持并实现“i-sense 2”跨学科研究中心（IRC）的主要目标，该中心旨在利用研究策略，在资源有限的环境中设计和推广基于智能手机的生物传感技术，用于（重新）新发传染病，流感样疾病，性传播感染和抗菌素耐药性。

South Africa's leading cause of death is tuberculosis (TB). The country is inflicted by the world's highest incidence rate of TB. Diagnosing TB is notoriously challenging and requires long testing times, costly equipment or false negatives. Of the currently available diagnostic tests, culture tests of sputum samples are the most sensitive but require at least 10 days prior to results. Sputum is often inaccessible, in children or patients co-infected with HIV. More powerful available techniques are costly, bulky or require specially trained staff, inhibiting their implementation in rural healthcare clinics. Point-of-care (POC) tests have transformed diagnoses of several diseases, including HIV in developed regions, and we aim to create innovative POC tests designed to be implemented in South Africa and are rapid, accurate, and cost-effective for the diagnosis of TB. Our design incorporates nanomaterial-based approaches to enable sensitive and specific detection, while microfluidic engineering will support sample processing and signal amplification to give optimal readouts. We will also incorporate a smartphone-based component with the intention to immediately report results and enable rapid linking with remote healthcare units or global healthcare organisations to improve TB monitoring. We will validate our device by analysing samples deriving from patients in South Africa and Malawi. We will perform validation studies in a small pilot study with the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), located in KwaZulu-Natal, a rural region of South Africa that hosts the epicentre of TB and HIV endemics. This Plus Award will directly support and feed into the main goals of the "i-sense2" Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC), which aims to exploit research strategies to design and promote smartphone-based biosensing technologies within resource-constrained settings, for (re)emerging infectious diseases, influenza-like illnesses, sexually transmitted infections and antimicrobial resistance.