SBIR Phase I: High Throughput COVID-19 Testing

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是缩短了2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）检测结果的周转时间。全球正在对鼻咽拭子进行常规检测，以努力控制病毒的传播。理想情况下，该测试的结果将在24小时内完成并报告，最好少于24小时。不幸的是，由于病例积压，检测结果通常需要2-3天甚至更长时间。该技术的成功开发将减少COVID-19检测样品制备的主要瓶颈，从而确保更快地报告结果。此外，本研究应通过快速富集病毒核糖核酸（RNA），大大提高唾液样本的分析能力，从而大大减少假阴性结果（特别是对于汇集的样本）。该项目采用一种正在申请专利的膜装置，用于快速自动化样品提取。使用这些装置可以在真空下引入样品，并在不到10分钟的时间内富集RNA。提取物可以快速分配到多个96孔板或可能384孔板进行高通量分析。从鼻咽拭子或唾液中富集的RNA将准备使用聚合酶链反应（PCR）进行敏感分析。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is faster turnaround time for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) testing results. Routine testing of nasopharyngeal swabs are being performed globally to try to control the spread of the virus. Ideally, the results of this testing will be done and reported within 24 hours, preferably less. Unfortunately, testing results have commonly been taking 2-3 days or even longer due to case backlogs. Successful development of the technology from this research should ensure much faster reporting of results by reducing the primary bottleneck of sample preparation of COVID-19 testing. In addition, this research should greatly improve the ability to analyze saliva samples by rapidly enriching the ribonucleic acid (RNA) of the virus, and this should therefore lead to greatly reducing false negative results (especially for pooled samples).The proposed project utilizes a patent pending membrane device for rapidly automating sample extraction. The use of these devices allows for samples to be introduced under vacuum, and RNA to be enriched in less than 10 min. The extracts can be rapidly dispensed into multiple 96 or possibly 384 well plates for high throughput analysis. The enriched RNA from nasopharyngeal swabs or saliva will be ready for sensitive analysis using polymerase chain reaction (PCR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.