Ontario, Canada (CU)_ Due to the new technology, which requires no lab testing, created by the researchers at McMaster University, the idea of visiting a doctor with symptoms of a disease and walking out with a scientifically evaluated diagnosis is now close to reality. Researchers from the college of engineering, biochemistry, and medicine have collaborated to develop a handheld fast test kit for bacterial infections that may yield accurate, reliable findings within an hour, making the lab testing secondary.
Their proof-of-concept study explains the test’s ability to detect urinary tract infections from real clinical samples. The test is being modified to detect various types of bacteria as well as to diagnose viruses quickly, including COVID-19. They are also researching to check if it can be used to detect cancer indicators. A small handheld gadget, similar to a blood-glucose monitor, is used with the new DNA-based technique. Using chemicals which can detect the unique protein signature of an illness, the microchip in the device tests a sample of body fluid such as blood, urine, or saliva. The device is roughly the size of a USB drive and connects to a smartphone and displays the results within a short time.
This invention is the result of Soleymani and her team’s electrochemical engineering technology combined with Li and his colleague Dingran Chang’s biochemical technology. They collaborated with Todd Hoare, a chemical engineering professor, and Marek Smeija, infectious disease clinician and a professor of medicine who gave samples from real patients. Currently, samples are normally sent to laboratories to be cultured, a procedure that might take days. Providing rapid test results to patients has numerous benefits such as preventing infection, improving patients’ quality of life, and making clinicians’ jobs easier.
The new technique can differentiate between bacterial strains that can be treated with antibiotics and bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics, which is an important step that can provide a solution to antimicrobial resistance or AMR. Using samples from a Hamilton clinic, the researchers are now evaluating to use the same technology to diagnose the COVID-19 virus. The researchers are looking into governmental permissions and commercial partnerships in order to take the technology into widespread usage as soon as possible, not just in Canada but around the world, particularly in areas where lab testing is limited or does not exist.
