Application of microfluidic paper‐based analytical device (μPAD) to detect COVID‐19 in energy deprived countries

Abstract

Coronavirus disease has spread all across the world. Low-and medium-income countries are more affected economically and socially compared to developed countries due to the lack of a rapid, robust, and affordable testing infrastructure. Furthermore, the high cost of real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system, sophisticated user-handling procedure, and high expense of the conventional clinical tests are the root causes of the less accessibility of the testing systems to the users. In this study, a COVID-19 Point-of-Care (POC) ecosystem model is proposed for the low-and medium-income countries (or energy deprived countries) that will facilitate the technological development with locally available fabrication components. In addition, the nontechnological development phases have also been discussed, which encompasses the collaboration among academia, local as well as government bodies, and entrepreneurial ventures. In addition, a hypothetical design of a microfluidic paper-based analytical (μPADs) POC platform is proposed to detect COVID-19 analyte using unprocessed patient-derived saliva, which is a miniaturized form-factor of conventional real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. The device contains four major reaction zones, which are sample zone, buffer zone, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) Master Mix zone, Ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) zone, and sensor zone. To obtain quicker test results and easier operation, a handheld image acquisition technique is introduced in this study. It is hypothesized that in a remote setting, the proposed design could be used as an initial guideline to develop a POC COVID-19 testing system, which may be simple, easy-to-use, and costeffective.

Latest Advances in Arbovirus Diagnostics

“…A µPAD device coupled to LAMP amplification has been hypothesized for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 using wax barriers to separate the individual chambers of the µPAD device. These chambers consist of a sample zone, buffer zone, LAMP master mix zone, mixing zone and finally a sensor zone [ 101 ]. Similar cost-effective and simple approaches could be applied to the detection of arboviral infection in POC applications.…”

A Review of Paper-Based Sensors for Gas, Ion, and Biological Detection

“…These sensors proved to be effective due to their high sensitivity, enabling accurate detection of the viruses [95,96]. Although paper-based sensors have high sensitivity, there are challenges such as regular standardization and approval for clinical use [97,98].…”

A 3D printed microfluidic PCR device towards detecting SARS-CoV-2

“…Paper-based microfluidics have been explored that are inexpensive to fabricate, but limited to the resolution of the printers used [14]. However, paper-based microfluidics has shown promising results for low-resource settings [15,16]. Recently stereolithography (SLA) based 3D printing (3DP) of microfluidic channels have been demonstrated that provided a new inexpensive alternative to LOC silicon microfabrication techniques [17][18][19].…”