News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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UCLA’s Ozcan Labs Develops Portable Smartphone DNA Detection System That Performs as well as Clinical Laboratory Testing

Mobile point-of-care (POC) smartphone-based nucleic acid assay allows for quick turn arounds and accurate information in any healthcare setting, including resource limited and remote environments 

DNA detection might soon be accomplished with the use of a smartphone. That’s the goal of a research effort at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). If this effort succeeds, it would give medical laboratories a new tool to use in genetic testing.

Clinical laboratory equipment is becoming more effective even as it shrinks in size and cost. One such device has been developed by Ozcan Laboratory Group, headed by UCLA professor Aydogan Ozcan, PhD. It is a portable, smartphone-based mobile lab with sensitivity and reliability on par with large-scale medical laboratory-based equipment.

Ozcan Lab’s portable DNA detection system, according to a UCLA press release, “leverages the sensors and optics of cellphones” and adapts them to read and report the presence of DNA molecules. The sensor uses a new detector dye mixture and reportedly produces a signal that is 10 to 20 times brighter than previous detector dye outputs.

This new system improves upon the optical detection abilities of current point-of-care nucleic acid tests (POCTs) and, according to a study published in the American Chemical Society’s ACS Nano, the device is able to “retain the same robust standards of benchtop lab-based tests.”

Go Anywhere Technology Improves POC Testing

Nucleic acid detecting assays are crucial tools anatomic pathologists use to identify pathogens, detect residual disease markers, and identify treatable mutations of diseases. Due to the need for amplification of nucleic acids for detection with benchtop equipment, there are challenges associated with providing rapid diagnostics outside the clinical laboratory.

The device developed by Ozcan Labs (above) is a “field-portable and cost-effective mobile-phone-based nucleic acid amplification and readout platform [that] is broadly applicable to other real-time nucleic acid amplification tests by similarly modulating intercalating dye performance. It is compatible with any fluorescence-based assay that can be run in a 96-well microplate format, making it especially valuable for POC and resource-limited settings.” (Caption and photo copyright: American Chemical Society.)

Using the new mobile POC nucleic acid testing system developed by Ozcan et al, pathologists can effectively step away from the lab to perform rapid POC testing and accelerated diagnostics onsite, rather than needing to transport materials to and from a central laboratory. The mobile testing assay enables pathologists to carry a medical laboratory with them into the field, or into limited-resource or decentralized testing environments, without sacrificing quality or sensitivity. And according to the ACS Nano article, at a relatively low-cost compared to benchtop nucleic acid testing equipment.

In an article published in Future Medicine, Ozcan and Hatice Ceylan Koydemir, PhD, a post-doctoral researcher in electrical engineering at UCLA, comment on the growing interest in mobile POC diagnostics, stating that smartphone-based devices and platforms have the potential “to be used for early detection and prevention of a variety of health problems.”

According to the article, smartphone-based sensing and imaging platforms have been developed to:

  • Analyze chemicals and biological specimens;
  • Perform advanced cytometry and bright-field/fluorescence microscopy;
  • Detect bacterial contamination;
  • Image nano-sized specimens;
  • Detect antimicrobial drug resistance; and
  • Analyze enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based testing.

Smartphones, according to Ozcan and Koydemir, have been adapted to a range of biomedical measurement tools, “have the potential to transform traditional uses of imaging, sensing, and diagnostic systems, especially for point-of-care applications and field settings,” and can provide speedy results.

A ‘Highly Stable’ and Sensitive System

The proof-of-concept study of Ozcan Lab’s new smartphone-based detection system and new detector dye mixture was led by Janay E. Kong, PhD in bioengineering at UCLA, with the help of Ozcan and fellow professors Dino Di Carlo, PhD, professor of bioengineering and mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, and Omai Garner, PhD, associate professor of clinical microbiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

According to an article in Bioscience Technologies, the new smartphone DNA detection system addresses issues with detection of light emitted from intercalator dyes, which are normally “too subtle and unstable for regular cellphone camera sensors.” The new system uses loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) to amplify DNA in connection with a newly developed dye that uses hydroxynaphthol blue (HNB) as an indicator.

The inclusion of HNB into the dye, according to the original research study, “yields 20 times higher fluorescent signal change over background compared to current intercalating dyes,” making the results bright enough for smartphone camera sensors without “interfering with the nucleic acid amplification process.” The original study reports that the digital LAMP system and use of the HNB intercalating dye, in fact, provided “significantly enhanced performance compared to a benchtop reader with standard LAMP conditions.”

Ozcan labs shows no signs of slowing down their development of mobile POC diagnostic devices. The development of these smartphone-based tools may provide unique and much-needed equipment for clinical pathologists given the rising interest in mobile healthcare worldwide.

Amanda Warren

Related Information:

UCLA Researchers Make DNA Detection Portable, Affordable Using Cellphones

Mobile Phones Create New Opportunities for Microbiology Research and Clinical Applications

Highly Stable and Sensitive Nucleic Acid Amplification and Cell-Phone-Based Readout

Cellphone System Makes DNA Detection Affordable and Portable

UCLA Device Enables Diagnosis of Antimicrobial Resistance in Any Setting; Could Save Lives Lost to Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria

UCLA Researchers Develop Lens-Free Smartphone Microscope, Pathologists May Be Able to Take the Clinical Pathology Laboratory Just About Anywhere

Smartphone “Dongle” Achieves Capabilities of Big Clinical Laboratory Analyzers: Diagnoses Three Diseases at Once from Single Drop of Blood

New Fast, Inexpensive, Mobile Device Accurately Identifies Healthcare-Acquired Infections and Communicates Findings to Doctors’ Smartphones and Portable Computers

Pathologists and Researchers Predict Development Trajectory for Biomarker-based Molecular Diagnostics in Support of Translational Medicine

Tiny, Simple-to-Use Lensless Microscope Might Soon Find a Place in Pathology

UK Research Team Develops Diagnostic USB Device That Detects HIV and Measures Viral Load from Human Blood for Use in Developing Countries

Clinical laboratory assays on a USB stick could become a powerful tool in the treatment and containment of HIV-1 in low-resource regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa

Imagine a small USB device that plugs into a computer and, using a small sample of blood, is capable of detecting the presence of HIV and measuring its viral load in that individual. Such technology exists and was created by a team of scientists in the United Kingdom (UK).  However, it is not yet ready for use by clinical laboratories.

Researchers at Imperial College London company, DNA Electronics, have developed a diagnostic USB stick that measures the presence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as well as the viral load in a person’s blood, and in less than 30 minutes. The platform promises to be an important milestone for the medical laboratory treatment and containment of pandemic diseases that pose a serious threat to global health.

A story published on the mobile technology news blog Quartz pointed out that more than 24-million of the 37-million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely recognized that high cost and lack of access to medical care and clinical laboratory services remain a barrier to diagnosis, treatment, and containment of the disease. “[I]mproving diagnostics is now a key part of global strategies to combat [HIV],” wrote the study authors in a paper published in Nature Research journal Scientific Reports. (more…)

Paper Microfluidic Devices Offer New Potential for Affordable Point-of-Care Tests for Use in Developing Countries That Have Few Clinical Laboratories

Paper-based devices could perform complex, multistep diagnostic tests at a fraction of the cost of traditional medical laboratory analysis

Many research teams are racing to create paper-based devices for medical laboratory tests. Their primary goal is develop a cheap, fast, reliable way to perform diagnostic testing in third world settings, where modern clinical laboratories are few and far between. One development team is working to combine lab-on-a-chip technologies with the low cost of paper-based platforms.

Meanwhile, over the past decade, point-of-care testing (POCT) has revolutionized diagnosis and treatment options for a myriad of conditions. In developing regions or remote areas, low-cost POCT improves accessibility to vital tests for infectious diseases, such as HIV, Malaria, and Ebola, as well as acute medical conditions, such as sepsis.

In the past eight years, Dark Daily has reported many times on the emergence of new POCT devices. From lactic acid screening to the lab-in-a-needle, which is used for detecting liver toxicity, the ability to produce a quick and accurate diagnosis without intensive clinical laboratory testing is growing.

However, one area where many POCT devices face challenges is in surviving extended environmental exposure. This does not pose an issue in major research hospitals or health systems. However, the consequences can be severe when considering the often harsh, resource-limited conditions of developing countries—one area in which POCT stands to offer the greatest value. (more…)

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