Digital Microfluidics for low cost COVID19 diagnostic systems in Latin-america

Mexico has been greatly impacted by the COVID-19, where the country is currently now the 3rd highest number of deaths per day due to the disease. This has been partially due to a dramatic shortfall of testing capacity, especially for lower-income communities. The CRISPR Cas12 diagnostic assay has recently been approved by the FDA, and it doesn't require complex equipment or expensive reagents except for the enzyme Cas12. In addition to this, its readout nature based on fluorescence makes it very suitable to be automated using the novel digital microfluidic systems, which allow the accurate control of nanodroplets along a surface of conducting, allowing a potential 1000 fold saving in reagents costs. Therefore, this proposal will focus on tackling the engineering challenges for the high throughput CAS12 COVID assay which are: • Development/certification of a low-cost digital microfluidics CRISPR/Cas12 diagnostic assays • Low cost in house production of Cas12 enzyme Novel engineering tools allowing the radical scaling up of diagnostic capacity would be critical to support a successful re-opening of their economies, avoid second outbreaks and prepare for future pandemics.