A role for Biofoundries in rapid development and validation of automated SARS-CoV-2 clinical diagnostics.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32900994.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-18130-3 and PMC identifier 7479142.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has shown how a rapid rise in demand for patient and community sample testing can quickly overwhelm testing capability globally. With most diagnostic infrastructure dependent on specialized instruments, their exclusive reagent supplies quickly become bottlenecks, creating an urgent need for approaches to boost testing capacity. We address this challenge by refocusing the London Biofoundry onto the development of alternative testing pipelines. Here, we present a reagent-agnostic automated SARS-CoV-2 testing platform that can be quickly deployed and scaled. Using an in-house-generated, open-source, MS2-virus-like particle (VLP) SARS-CoV-2 standard, we validate RNA extraction and RT-qPCR workflows as well as two detection assays based on CRISPR-Cas13a and RT-loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP). In collaboration with an NHS diagnostic testing lab, we report the performance of the overall workflow and detection of SARS-CoV-2 in patient samples using RT-qPCR, CRISPR-Cas13a, and RT-LAMP. The validated RNA extraction and RT-qPCR platform has been installed in NHS diagnostic labs, increasing testing capacity by 1000 samples per day.
Medical subject headings
- Betacoronavirus
- Clinical Laboratory Techniques
- Coronavirus Infections
- Pneumonia, Viral