Affiliations 

  • 1 The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, P. R. China
  • 2 Xi'an Diandi Biotech Company, Xi'an, 710049, P. R. China
  • 3 School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, P. R. China
  • 4 Key Laboratory of Shaanxi Province for Craniofacial Precision Medicine Research, College of Stomatology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, P. R. China
  • 5 Department of Primary Care Medicine, University of Malaya Primary Care Research Group, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Lembah Pantai, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 6 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, Lembah Pantai, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Adv Healthc Mater, 2017 Jan;6(1).
PMID: 27860384 DOI: 10.1002/adhm.201600920

Abstract

Paper-based devices have been broadly used for the point-of-care detection of dengue viral nucleic acids due to their simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and readily observable colorimetric readout. However, their moderate sensitivity and functionality have limited their applications. Despite the above-mentioned advantages, paper substrates are lacking in their ability to control fluid flow, in contrast to the flow control enabled by polymer substrates (e.g., agarose) with readily tunable pore size and porosity. Herein, taking the benefits from both materials, the authors propose a strategy to create a hybrid substrate by incorporating agarose into the test strip to achieve flow control for optimal biomolecule interactions. As compared to the unmodified test strip, this strategy allows sensitive detection of targets with an approximately tenfold signal improvement. Additionally, the authors showcase the potential of functionality improvement by creating multiple test zones for semi-quantification of targets, suggesting that the number of visible test zones is directly proportional to the target concentration. The authors further demonstrate the potential of their proposed strategy for clinical assessment by applying it to their prototype sample-to-result test strip to sensitively and semi-quantitatively detect dengue viral RNA from the clinical blood samples. This proposed strategy holds significant promise for detecting various targets for diverse future applications.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.