Field-deployable, Quantitative, Rapid Identification of Active Ebola Virus Infection in Unprocessed Blood
The West African Ebola virus outbreak underlined the importance of delivering mass diagnostic capability outside the clinical or primary care setting
Abstract
The West African Ebola virus outbreak underlined the importance of delivering mass diagnostic capability outside the clinical or primary care setting in effectively containing public health emergencies caused by infectious disease. Yet, to date, there is no solution for reliably deploying at the point of need the gold standard diagnostic method, real time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), in a laboratory infrastructure-free manner. In this proof of principle work, we demonstrate direct performance of RT-qPCR on fresh blood using far-red fluorophores to resolve fluorogenic signal inhibition and controlled, rapid freeze/thawing to achieve viral genome extraction in a single reaction chamber assay.
This research was supported by the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme
Citation
Kavit Shah, Emma Bentley, Adam Tyler et al. Field-deployable, quantitative, rapid identification of active Ebola virus infection in unprocessed blood. Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 7780-7797