IRC Next Steps Plus: A Smartphone Powered mRNA Sequence Detector

南非的主要死因是结核病。该国是世界上结核病发病率最高的国家。诊断结核病是出了名的具有挑战性，需要很长的检测时间、昂贵的设备或假阴性。在目前可用的诊断测试中，痰样本培养测试是最敏感的，但至少需要10天才能得出结果。儿童或合并感染艾滋病毒的患者往往无法获得痰液。现有更强大的技术价格昂贵、体积庞大或需要经过专门培训的工作人员，阻碍了它们在农村卫生保健诊所的实施。医疗点检测已经改变了包括发达地区的艾滋病毒在内的几种疾病的诊断，我们的目标是创建创新的医疗点检测，旨在在南非实施，并且对结核病的诊断是快速、准确和具有成本效益的。我们的设计结合了基于纳米材料的方法，以实现敏感和特定的检测，而微流体工程将支持样品处理和信号放大，以提供最佳读数。我们还将整合一个基于智能手机的组件，目的是立即报告结果，并与远程医疗单位或全球医疗机构快速连接，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。我们将与位于夸祖鲁-纳塔尔省的非洲卫生研究所（AHRI）在一项小型试点研究中进行验证研究。夸祖鲁-纳塔尔省是南非的一个农村地区，是结核病和艾滋病毒流行的中心。该Plus奖将直接支持和推动“i-sense2”跨学科研究中心（IRC）的主要目标，该中心旨在利用研究战略，在资源有限的情况下设计和推广基于智能手机的生物传感技术，用于（重新）出现的传染病、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.