Waching daily Feb 5 2019

-We want to be able to run our tests anywhere in the world.

So if they're in a doctor's office

or a patient's home, it needs to be as minimal amount

of equipment as possible.

My lab started working solely on paper devices

where we could do the entire process

in a piece of paper without using any other materials.

However, we found that if we wanna amplify the RNA

and we wanna detect as early as possible in an infection,

we're gonna need a source of heat

and we looked at chemical methods,

but we ultimately turned to electronics

because they're small and convenient.

Here is our original paper device plan

and here are the electronics that go around it.

We have some temperature sensors

and some printed resisters that we developed

that are able to control the heat process.

This is a low-power device that can perform the reactions

in the paper and heat the device as needed

and control and stop and start the fluid flow

so that we can run our assay that takes our sample,

captures the HIV, amplifies the RNA inside of it,

and then detects it downstream on an easy to read

lateral flow assay.

And these lateral flow assays are the same exact process

as a pregnancy test.

There are tests that can run RNA-based detection of HIV,

but they need to be done in a laboratory setting

and right now those are done with pooled samples

of multiple different patients.

What we'd like to do is to be able to take that one sample,

run it immediately, and get that person a result right away.

I like the really applied nature of this work

in that we are developing something from scratch,

building it, and we get to test it with our partners

and really take it into clinics.

In a very short period of time,

we hope that it's actually going to be saving lives.