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

DAMIÁN PRESTI; JULIÁN BERGIER; JEFFRY H. MARTÍNEZ VALDIVIEZO; MARCOS BILEN; GUSTAVO ADRIAN TORCHIA

SPIE

Proc. SPIE 11812, Molecular and Nano Machines IV

Lugar: Washington D. C.; Año: 2021

0277-786X

In recent years, Argentina and countries of the region, have suered epidemics associated with arboviruses, mainly Dengue and more recently Zika and Chikungunya. On the other hand, since the worldwide pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), people´s health and the economic support of their countries have been seriously affected. It is necessary to have economic and faster diagnostic tools that allows 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).Specically, in this work, a bio-photonic device has been developed. This instrument is able to detect certain diseases by means of a luminescence spectral analysis. This method can be conducted for saliva samples. The system consists in the fluorescence signal detection generated by a specic probe of the target viral genome, that coupled to isothermal amplication reaction, allowing the detection of the pathogen in the sample.The device excites the sample to be analyzed with light (led or semiconductor lasers with specic wavelengths) thus it triggers a spontaneous emission of the fluorophore bound to the specic probe. The emitted fluorescence is suitably ltered using interferential lters. These lters 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 the signal level, dene the case as positive or negative. All the analysis is done autonomously inside the developed device through an integrated control system and it is connected to a portable device to show the results wirelessly