{"id":39025,"date":"2020-05-06T11:37:28","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T15:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=39025"},"modified":"2020-05-11T18:33:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T22:33:02","slug":"fast-paper-strip-covid-19-test-devised-with-crispr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=39025","title":{"rendered":"[Updated] Fast Paper Strip Covid-19 Test Devised with Crispr"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sherlock<\/a>
Sherlock paper test strips (Zhang Lab, Broad Institute)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Update<\/strong> 11 May 2020. Sherlock Biosciences says it received an emergency use authorization<\/a> from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its Crispr-based SARS-CoV-2 detection kit.<\/p>\n

6 May 2020. A simple, fast test for Covid-19 infections with treated paper dipped in specimens is being created with the gene-editing technology Crispr. The test is developed by a team from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research<\/a> at MIT and Broad Institute<\/a>, a genetics research center affiliated with MIT and Harvard University.<\/p>\n

Simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-deploy diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 viruses responsible for Covid-19 infections is an urgent need in the U.S. and elsewhere to find individuals with virus and to assess the state of public health. Advances in testing technology are happening quickly<\/a>, with new methods recently introduced for point-of-care and even at-home testing.<\/p>\n

But most of those techniques require extracting RNA from the specimen and conducting a reverse transcription – polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR<\/a>, test to amplify DNA in specimens for detecting SARS-CoV-2. RT-PCR tests use a specialized, sophisticated, and expensive genetics technology, usually in a remote lab. Current tests are also hampered by a shortage of chemical reagents to extract RNA from specimen samples and even swabs to collect samples.<\/p>\n

A team led by McGovern and Broad researchers Feng Zhang<\/a>, Omar Abudayyeh<\/a>, and Jonathan Gootenberg<\/a> applied a diagnostic technology to Covid-19 testing, using the gene editing technology Crispr<\/a> — short for clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats — designed to create simple diagnostics. That technology known as Sherlock<\/a>, short for specific high-sensitivity enzymatic reporter unlocking, employs Crispr to edit RNA rather than DNA.<\/p>\n

Sherlock uses Crispr editing enzymes that seek out specific genetic sequences in a specimen sample, and if detected in the sample, bind to and cut the RNA in nearby locations. Sherlock adds a reporter sequence to the RNA, a specific piece of synthetic RNA, which also gets cut by the editing enzyme, releasing a signal identifying the presence of the original target sequence. When coupled with a companion technique (and acronym) Inspectr<\/a>, short for internal splint-pairing expression cassette translation reaction, reporter sequence signals are converted into a bioluminescent visual display that can appear on an everyday material like paper and at room temperature.<\/p>\n

The McGovern-Broad team applies Sherlock with an editing enzyme called Cas12b<\/a> to detect SARS-CoV-2 in a platform called STOPCovid<\/a>, described in a paper for publication<\/a>. The researchers say STOPCovid can detect the virus from saliva or nose-throat samples on paper strips with equal true-positive sensitivity and true-negative specificity as RT-PCR analysis. Visible results on the strips are returned in about 70 minutes, while using a fluorescent reading device reduces that time to 40 minutes. A proof-of-concept assessment shows STOPCovid accurately detected SARS-CoV-2 in 12 individuals already testing positive for the virus, while not detecting virus in 5 persons testing negative.<\/p>\n

“The ability to test for COVID-19 at home, or even in pharmacies or places of employment, could be a game-changer for getting people safely back to work and into their communities,” says Zhang in a statement. “Creating a point-of-care tool is a critically important goal to allow timely decisions for protecting patients and those around them.”<\/p>\n

As reported by Science & Enterprise<\/a> in March 2019, the Sherlock technology is licensed to the spin-off enterprise Sherlock Biosciences, but in this case, STOPCovid is made openly available under a technology sharing arrangement<\/a> established by Harvard, MIT, and Stanford University. Those terms allow for sharing STOPCovid under a non-exclusive royalty-free license, as long as it’s used to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19 infections during the pandemic and for a short period after. Resulting products must also be distributed as widely as possible and at low cost.<\/p>\n

The researchers point out the STOPCovid technology has not yet been submitted to FDA for authorization, and is still limited to research.<\/p>\n

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