Development and construction of a point of care device for application to molecular diagnostics

D.PRESTI; J.BERGIER; M. BILEN; J. MARTINEZ VALDIVIESO; G.A. TORCHIA

San Diego

Conferencia; Optics + Photonics; 2021

SPIE

In recent years, Argentina and countries of the region, have suffered epidemics associated with arboviruses, mainly Dengue and more recently Zika and Chikungunya. On the other hand, since the worldwide epidemic of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), people´s health and the economic guarantees of their countries have been seriously affected. It is necessary to have economic and faster diagnostic tools that allow evaluating samples of patients with symptoms. With this objective, diagnostic systems called point of care have been recently developed. These systems are dened as medical diagnostic testing at or near the point of care (that is, at the time and place of patient care).Specifically, in this work, a bio-photonic device has been developed. This device is able to detect certain diseases by means of a luminescence spectral analysis. The analysis can be performed from a blood sample. The system consists of the uorescence signal detection generated by a specific probe of the target viral genome, that coupled to isothermal amplification reaction allows the detection of the pathogen in the sample. The device excites the sample to be analyzed with light (led or semiconductor lasers with specificc wavelengths) thus it triggers a spontaneous emission of the fluorophore bound to the specificc probe. The emitted fluorescenceis suitably altered using interferential filters. These filters limit the spectral regions and allow discriminating the analysis band. Under these conditions, a signal is registered in a built-in detector and, depending on this signal, resolves the case as positive or negative. All the analysis is done autonomously inside the device through an integrated control system and it is connected to a cell phone to show the results wirelessly.