Scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) developed an experimental diagnostic test for COVID-19 that they say can visually detect the virus in just 10 minutes.
Dipanjan Pan, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine and Pediatrics , who led the team of US scientists said that the new test is quite “promising.”
“Based on our preliminary results, we believe this promising new test may detect RNA material from the virus as early as the first day of infection.”
Pan created a company called VirtuVian Bio to develop a COVID-19 test for commercial application. Although he has high hopes for this new test, Pan stressed, “additional studies are needed, however, to confirm whether this is indeed the case.”
According to Science Daily, the test does not require the use of any advanced laboratory techniques. Instead it uses a simple assay containing plasmonic gold nanoparticles to detect a color change once a virus in present.
First, a nasal swab or saliva sample must be obtained from a patient where the RNA is extracted. Then using the extracted RNA, the nanoparticles will bind to specific proteins exclusively detectable in COVID-19. As the gold begins to cluster, the color of the liquid will change from purple to blue if the patient has COVID-19.
Pan told Fierce Biotech, “The accuracy of any COVID-19 test is based on being able to reliably detect any virus. This means it does not give a false negative result if the virus actually is present, nor a false-positive result if the virus is not present.”
He continued by saying, “Many of the diagnostic tests currently on the market cannot detect the virus until several days after infection. For this reason, they have a significant rate of false-negative results.”
Pan and his fellow researchers published their work in the American Chemical Society’s nanotechnology journal, ACS Nano.
The UMSOM researchers wrote in the ACS Nan, how they aimed to find a solution for the “urgent unmet need for a point-of-care (POC), rapid, cost-effective and selective diagnostic test for COVID-19 that can provide fast and accurate test results within a duration of less than an hour and possibly within minutes.”
That is why, Pan and his fellow researchers predicted their test to be far less expensive to produce than standard COVID-19 molecular tests and suitable to use in daycare centers, nursing homes, college campuses or even the workplace.
Pan plans to have a pre-submission meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the next month to discuss requirements for getting an emergency use authorization for the test, according to American Bazaar.
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