A Nanophotonic-based Assay for Point-of-Care Medical Diagnostics of Malaria in Low and Middle Income Countries

摘要

Direct detection of genetic biomarkers in tissue and body fluids without complex target extraction and amplificationprocesses can revolutionize nucleic acid-based diagnostics by enabling the use of this technology at the point-of-care. Thedevelopment of point-of-care diagnostics is important to increase access to early treatment in underserved populations inlow to middle income countries, which are disproportionally affected by infectious diseases and increasingly affected bycertain types of cancer. The main obstacle to the development of such technologies is the low concentration of targetsequences that makes this goal challenging. We report a method for direct detection of pathogen RNA in blood lysateusing a bioassay using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based detection assay that can be integrated in a“lab-in-a-stick” portable device. We could directly detect synthetic target with a limit of detection of 200 fM and, moreimportantly, we detected P. falciparum malaria parasite RNA directly in infected red blood cells lysate. Additionally, thispaper will discuss the use of the developed assay for the identification of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma(HNSCC), which is an increasingly prevalent malignancy in low to middle income countries.