U. Arizona is developing smartphone-based COVID-19 tests
Jeong-Yeol Yoon, a University of Arizona professor of biosystems engineering, and his term provide a tour of their lab. (University of Arizona)
Share Feb 5, 2021 | EDSCOOP
Painful nose swab no more researchers at the University of Arizona have announced they’re developing a smartphone-based COVID-19 test that’s simple enough it can be conducted by non-scientists.
The test relies on a smartphone-connected microscope to analyze saliva samples and can deliver results in just 10 minutes, the university announced last week. The test requires only a smartphone, a simple microscope and a piece of medical-grade, wax-coated paper. According to the university, the materials needed for a single test cost about $45.
The Uinviersity of Arizona originally developed the test for novovirus
It uses a saliva sample under a simple microscope that attaches to your phone
Antibodies with fluorescent beads are added and glow if they find viral particles
Users can then count the clumps of fluorescent beads to see if they re positive
The goal is to combine the speed of antigen tests and the accuracy of PCR tests
They plan to use the method in conjunction with a saline swish-gargle test developed by
The team s latest research using water samples – done in collaboration with
Kelly A. Reynolds, chair of the Department of Community, Environment and Policy in the UArizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health – is published today in Nature Protocols. We ve outlined it so that other scientists can basically repeat what we did and create a norovirus-detecting device, said
Lane Breshears, a biomedical engineering doctoral student in Yoon s lab. Our goal is that if you want to adapt it for something else, like we ve adapted it for COVID-19, that you have all the ingredients you need to basically make your own device.
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