Diagnostics
Detecting pathogen associated nucleic acid is the basis of the molecular diagnostic tests which are accepted gold standard for the diagnoses of virus infections. While antigen tests suffer from low accuracy owing to rapid evolution of the virus, targeting conserved genomic signature present within the pathogen confers high sensitivity and specificity towards detection. However, conventional molecular diagnostic tests methods (e.g. RT-PCR) require expensive instruments, sophisticated laboratory infrastructure and skilled manpower which restricts their accessibility only to the urban cities of the world. We are aimed towards developing rapid, robust and low-cost molecular tests that can detect pathogen associated nucleic acid at the point of care without the necessity of high-end infrastructural support and hence deployable at the urban or rural areas with equal efficacies.
Novel Diagnostic platforms:
Nucleic acid based molecular diagnostic tests are accepted gold standard for the diagnosis of viral infections. While antigen tests suffer from low accuracy due to rapid evolution of viruses, targeting conserved genomic signatures within the pathogen confers high sensitivity and specificity of detection of viral infection. However, conventional molecular diagnostic methods (e.g. RT-PCR) require expensive instruments, sophisticated laboratory infrastructure and skilled manpower limiting access mostly to urban areas. We are aimed towards developing rapid, robust and low-cost molecular tests that can detect pathogen-associated nucleic acid at the point of care without extensive infrastructural support and can be deployed at urban or rural settings with equal efficacies. These molecular diagnostic approaches are being explored to detect and distinguish between respiratory pathogens with common symptoms like SARS CoV-2, Influenza A & B virus, Respiratory Syncytial virus and Human Respiratory Adenovirus. We are also working to develop a rapid, cost-effective point-of-care molecular diagnostic test for MTB infection suitable for deployment at the resource-limited settings.
Point of care nucleic acid test platform for detection of respiratory pathogens. Nasal or swab sample collected from suspected patient dissolved in sample collection buffer and then the raw sample or extracted nucleic acid from the swab sample used for the diagnosis in Piecewise Thermal reaction. Test results appeared in the form of visual colorimetric changes which can be interpreted with the integrated mobile application.
Publication details:
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Banerjee S, Biswas SK, Kedia N, Sarkar R, De A, Mitra S, Roy S, Chowdhury R, Samaddar S, Bandopadhyay A, Banerjee I, Jana S, Goswami R, Dutta S, Chawla-Sarkar M, Chakraborty S, Mondal A*. Piecewise Isothermal Nucleic Acid Testing (PINAT) for Infectious Disease Detection with Sample-to-Result Integration at the Point-of-Care. ACS Sensors. 2021 Oct 22; 6(10): 3753-3764. doi: https://doi.org/10.1021/acssensors.1c01573.
Patent details:
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Kedia, N., Biswas, S.K., Banerjee, S., Bandopadhyay, A., Mondal, A. and Chakraborty, S., Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, 2022. Point of care (POC) device for facilitating nucleic acid based testing and method thereof. U.S. Patent 11,440,014.
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Kedia, N., Biswas, S.K., Banerjee, S., Bandopadhyay, A., Mondal, A. and Chakraborty, S., Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, 2024. Method for POC-based detection of pathogenic infection via nucleic acid based testing. U.S. Patent 11,919,006.
Representative images of device and lamp data
Point of care (POC) nucleic acid based molecular diagnostic tests through colorimetric and fluorometric methods for rapid detection of different infectious diseases.