TY - JOUR
T1 - A novel flow through assay and smartphone application based prototype for point-of-care diagnosis of tuberculosis
AU - Hacking, Joanne
AU - Gwenin, Vanessa Valerie
AU - Baird, Mark Stephen
AU - Rizwan, Mohammad
AU - Gwenin, Christopher David
N1 - © 2025 Published by Elsevier Inc. / Crown Copyright
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Data availability statement:
Not present.
PY - 2025/5/1
Y1 - 2025/5/1
N2 - Affordable point-of-care test sensors with automated result recording are essential for reducing undetected tuberculosis cases in remote, resource-limited areas. Therefore, this study addresses this need with three key aims. First, we aimed to lower the costs of a patented flow-through assay (Kit and method: WO2016/024116A1) by developing an in-house method for producing antibody-coated gold nanoparticles (anti-IgG-AuNPs). These anti-IgG-AuNPs demonstrated specific binding with performance comparable to existing antibody-capped gold nanoparticles. The second aim was to transform the flow-through assay into a multi-disease screening tool by incorporating multiple antigen test spots. A newly designed wax-printed background allows for simultaneous testing of up to five antigens, delivering results within 15 min at the point-of-care, while also reducing assay costs by 70 %. Lastly, we developed a smartphone application (RAP-TBS) to provide quantitative analysis of the flow-through assay results. This user-friendly app requires no additional hardware and addresses the limitations of subjective visual interpretation.
AB - Affordable point-of-care test sensors with automated result recording are essential for reducing undetected tuberculosis cases in remote, resource-limited areas. Therefore, this study addresses this need with three key aims. First, we aimed to lower the costs of a patented flow-through assay (Kit and method: WO2016/024116A1) by developing an in-house method for producing antibody-coated gold nanoparticles (anti-IgG-AuNPs). These anti-IgG-AuNPs demonstrated specific binding with performance comparable to existing antibody-capped gold nanoparticles. The second aim was to transform the flow-through assay into a multi-disease screening tool by incorporating multiple antigen test spots. A newly designed wax-printed background allows for simultaneous testing of up to five antigens, delivering results within 15 min at the point-of-care, while also reducing assay costs by 70 %. Lastly, we developed a smartphone application (RAP-TBS) to provide quantitative analysis of the flow-through assay results. This user-friendly app requires no additional hardware and addresses the limitations of subjective visual interpretation.
U2 - 10.1016/j.diagmicrobio.2025.116766
DO - 10.1016/j.diagmicrobio.2025.116766
M3 - Article
SN - 0732-8893
VL - 112
JO - Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease
JF - Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease
IS - 1
M1 - 116766
ER -
