A team of CRAFT researchers at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) have created a an automated and easy to use test for diagnosing COVID-19 in less than 60 minutes, with comparable sensitivity and accuracy to RT-PCR.

This new technology has the potential to overcome some of the challenges of centralized diagnostic testing (e.g., need for specialized equipment and highly trained personnel, and lengthy times-to-result), and thus represents a promising new method for detecting and monitoring the virus at point-of-care settings to help quell future outbreaks.

The development of this new test was led by Dr. Lidija Malic, a Team Lead and Research Officer at the NRC’s Medical Device Research Centre, and is fully described in a recent publication in Lab on a Chip, the premiere academic journal for microfluidics research.

According to the publication, the test uses the NRC’s cutting-edge PowerBlade technique, consisting of disposable, credit card-sized microfluidic cartridges and a small benchtop instrument. To detect SARS-CoV-2 virus, patient nasopharyngeal samples are loaded into a cartridge containing lyophilized reagents. The cartridge is then inserted into a benchtop instrument that rotates the cartridge, combining centrifugal forces with integrated pneumatic controls, to process and analyze the samples in a fully automated fashion.

The test is now being rigorously evaluated by clinicians and researchers in hospitals, which is the next step towards deploying the test in the health care system.

Publication: Malic L, Brassard D, Da Fonte D, Nassif C, Mounier M, Ponton A, Geissler M, Shiu M, Morton KJ, Veres T. Automated sample-to-answer centrifugal microfluidic system for rapid molecular diagnostics of SARS-CoV-2. Lab Chip. 2022 Aug 23;22(17):3157-3171. doi: 10.1039/d2lc00242f.

Watch a YouTube video about the NRC PowerBlade.

The NRC PowerBlade (left) and Dr. Lidija Malic (right).