Developing a Rapid Do-It-Yourself Test for the Home-Based Diagnostics and Monitoring of COVID-19 Enabled by the Integration of Functional Nucleic Acids and Electrochemical Readout

该提案的重点是开发一种用于家庭诊断和监测COVID-19的自己动手（DIY）测试。目前诊断COVID-19的金标准技术需要核酸扩增来检测病毒RNA。病毒检测的这一步骤使得很难创建一种廉价且便携的测试方法来进行家庭分析。现有的COVID-19家庭检测不能直接检测病毒的存在；相反，它们感觉到了自身反应（抗体测试）中产生的抗体，表现不佳，尤其是在疾病发作的早期。针对对可用于广泛检测和接触者追踪的DIY家庭测试的迫切需求，我们建议创建一种手持式廉价芯片/读取器系统，用于COVID-19分析。该系统将建立在我们之前专注于检测细菌蛋白质的工作基础上，直接检测SARS-CoV-2特异性病毒蛋白质。这里使用合成DNA机器直接结合高度丰富的病毒蛋白质，并生成易于检测的DNA条形码，可以使用插入手持读取器（连接到智能手机的小加密狗）的电子芯片进行分析。实现家庭检测的技术预计将对加拿大和全球抗击COVID-19或其他传染病大流行产生重大影响，因为它们将允许：(1)更有效地利用卫生保健资源，(2)在隔离或康复期间在家中经常监测患者，(3)在入境点和偏远地区应用检测，以及(4)显著提高整体检测能力。在大流行高峰过后恢复经济活动的时期，这些检测是必不可少的。在这一点上，加强与流行病学监测相结合的分散检测对于迅速识别和隔离受感染个体以避免未来爆发至关重要。

This proposal is focused on developing a do-it-yourself (DIY) test for the home-based diagnostics and monitoring of COVID-19. The current gold standard techniques for diagnosing COVID-19 require nucleic acid amplification for detecting viral RNA. This step in viral detection makes it difficult to create a test that is inexpensive and portable enough for home based analysis. The existing home-based tests for COVID-19 do not directly detect the presence of the virus; instead, they sense the antibodies generated in their response (antibody tests), presenting poor performance especially in the early days of disease onset. In response to the urgent need for a DIY home test that can be used for wide-spread testing and contact tracing, we propose to create a handheld and inexpensive chip/reader system for COVID-19 analysis. This system will build on our previous work focused on detecting bacterial proteins to directly detect viral proteins specific to SARS-CoV-2. Synthetic DNA machines are used here to directly bind highly abundant viral proteins and generate an easy-to-detect DNA barcode, which can be analyzed using an electronic chip plugged into a handheld reader (a small dongle connected to smart phones). Technologies that enable home-based testing are expected to make a major impact in the fight against COVID-19 or other infectious disease pandemics in Canada and globally because they will allow for: (1) health care resources to be used more efficiently, (2) patients to be frequently monitored at home during quarantine or recovery, (3) testing to be applied at points of entry and remote areas, and (4) the overall testing capacity to be significantly increased. These tests are essential during the time following the peak of pandemics when economic activity is resumed. At that point, increased decentralized testing integrated with epidemiological surveillance will become essential for rapidly identifying and isolating infected individuals for avoiding future outbreaks.