Ultra-Low-Cost Integrated Silicon-based Transducer for On-Site, Genetic Detection of Pathogens

Estefania Nunez-Bajo; Michael Kasimatis; Yasin Cotur; Tarek Asfour; Alex Collins; Ugur Tanriverdi; Max Grell; Matti Kaisti; Guglielmo Senesi; Karen Stevenson; Firat Guder

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.23.002931 doi: bioRxiv preprint 5 sensitive, require expensive instruments. 4 The fluorescent labels used in optical detection are also difficult to handle and susceptible to photobleaching. Optical detection systems have been difficult to miniaturize and largely limited to centralized laboratories, however, some early concepts have been proposed by various groups in the literature. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Despite low-cost onsite testing for infectious diseases is being the holy grail of NA diagnostics, there are still no inexpensive and handheld solutions in the market that can provide truly portable, rapid NA detection. Commercially available, benchtop optical lab instruments such as GeneXpert (Cephied) have already made a substantial difference in the speed of NA-based diagnosis of infectious diseases but the high cost of the instrument/tests, large size and power consumption have prevented the adoption of these systems for use in the field.