RADX TECH PROJECT #2620 ACCELERATED MANUFACTURING SCALE-UP FOR ANP TECHNOLOGIES' NANO-INTELLIGENT DETECTION SYSTEM(NIDS)COVID-19 ANTIGEN RAPID TEST

The extreme severity of the current COVID-19 outbreak represents the single worst outbreak in recent years. Exacerbated by the fast moving, highly contagious, asymptomatic disease progression and high mortality in vulnerable populations, particularly those in low resource areas, the need for a rapid, low-cost, easy to use, highly sensitive/clinical relevant, home-use or Point of Care (POC) test to qualitatively detect SARS-nCoV-2 virus is paramount. To combat such a novel virus, it would be highly useful to deploy rapid testing at high frequency using an easy-to-use assay that targets multiple antigens of the virus, yet can return results in only a matter of minutes. The current benchmark of RT-PCR-based testing, although highly sensitive, is only capable of detecting the presence of viral nucleic acids in the patient specimen, unable to provide any information regarding the potential infectiousness of an individual. Moreover, the turnaround time for these tests is abysmal â€" often taking 3 or more days to get the results and subsequently quarantine these individuals. By then, they have already transmitted the virus to countless others. Currently approved antigen rapid tests, targeting the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein, suffer a similar drawback, detecting a single antigen (nucleocapsid). Therefore, an intelligent multiplexed rapid test that can not only detect the nucleocapsid protein antigen, but in addition, distinguish active or potentially highly infectious individuals versus those whom are in the recovery or low state of infectiousness through the added multiplexing of the spike antigen into a single assay is essential to mitigate further infections.