Title:

Low-Cost Gold-Leaf Sensing Platform for Multiplexed Detection of Infectious Diseases

Tuberculosis (TB) and COVID-19 are respiratory illnesses that remain prevalent in low-resource settings (LRS) due to insufficient diagnostic capabilities. Despite having similar symptoms these two illnesses have very different treatment strategies, especially as one is microbial and the other is viral. This difference highlights the critical need for rapidly deployable diagnostics that can identify a given infection at the point-of-use. Gold-standard methods of detection for both TB and COVID-19 rely on costly laboratory equipment and highly trained personnel, making them inaccessible in LRS. Further, there is no diagnostic that simultaneously tests for these two illnesses; multiple successive tests are required to distinguish between the two conditions. To create a multiplexed panel for multiple illnesses at the point-of-care in LRS, we created a low-cost biosensor with a dual electrode system from gold leaf electrodes. The gold leaf electrodes can be fabricated on a benchtop without specialized equipment, making them conducive for LRS diagnosis. These electrodes were paired with isothermal amplification and a Cas12a-based electrochemical assay to achieve the sufficient sensitivity and specificity necessary for detection of both COVID-19 and TB simultaneously. Though we have focused on detection of respiratory illnesses, given the generalizability of our methods, we anticipate this portable sensing platform will enable multiplexed diagnostics of any disease with a nucleic acid marker at the point-of-care in LRS.

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