Background: Dengue and Zika are members of the flavivirus family of arthropod-borne viruses. Given shared ecology and mosquito vectors, Zika is emerging in areas with endemic dengue virus transmission. Immunity studies indicate that dengue shows substantial cross-reaction to Zika and increases the chances of Zika infection, posing a rising global public health threat. Current diagnostic technologies take place in a centralised laboratory and are usually expensive, time-consuming and requiring specialist equipment and personnel. Continued emergence of dengue and Zika viruses, coupled with a lack of effective global surveillance, raises the need for a quantitative, rapid and sample-to-answer diagnostic device. We therefore aim to develop an integrated and innovative diagnostic device, deployable in a wide range of healthcare settings for populations suffering from epidemic diseases.Methods & Materials: Our approach relies on ultrasensitive and precise nucleic acid amplification coupled with pH-sensing complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology integrated in a lab-on-chip platform. The pH-sensing microchip integrates more than 4000 sensors and employs label-free loopmediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). The hydrogen ions released during the amplification reaction are measured in realtime and are proportional to the amount of double-stranded DNA produced. Specific LAMP primers for dengue and Zika viruses were investigated based on their nucleotide sequence alignment, which includes more than 500 recent outbreak strains of each virus.Results: We report the molecular detection and quantification of 4 serotypes of dengue and Zika viruses by our lab-on-chip platform. Experiments were conducted with a real-time PCR instrument and the platform simultaneously. Time to positive was achieved from 10 to 40 mins from 10 5 to 10 1 copies per reaction, confirming both rapid detection and sensitivity.
Conclusion:We have developed a first of its kind portable diagnostic device able to detect the 4 dengue serotypes and Zika in a quantitative and rapid way using our lab-on-chip platform. The information collected from the device has the potential to improve diagnosis and treatment for infectious diseases and contribute to real-time surveillance and epidemiology. Clinical tests for this new technology will be conducted in dengue and Zika epidemic countries, including Thailand and Taiwan.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.