PFI-TT: Development of A Rapid and Reliable Point-of-Care Screening for Infectious Diseases (COVID-19)

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to improve public health outcomes in combating pandemic/epidemic diseases, such as COVID-19. An urgent need exists for a rapid, cost-effective, facile and reliable assays for mass screening to control and prevent the spread of emerging pandemic diseases. The proposed project will demonstrate a mass screening method to rapidly detect viruses, which can be used to identify early infected individuals for quarantine. The proposed product can be potentially used in many settings such as test centers, clinics, school health clinics and airport controls. The project will also: offer research and internship opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds and underrepresented groups, as well as local K-12 teachers and students; entrepreneurship training for participating students; and develop new industrial-academic partnerships. This work will enable rapid and reliable point-of-care detection with benefits of affordability, simplicity and rapidity, which will reduce user onboarding time and costs.

The proposed project will address the current challenge of a rapid, affordable, facile and reliable detection in molecular sensing and diagnosis. The proposed project will develop a novel mechanism of engineering smart molecular devices by integrating molecular computation with specific target recognition and signal amplification on the nanoscale. The specific goals include the development of a solution assay to rapidly detect viral RNA, and a user-friendly system for integration with a lateral-flow device. The proposed research will employ a multidisciplinary approach that combines computational design, molecular assembly and circuits, and biochemical assays.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.