Chinese COVID-19 Diagnostic Test Delivers Accurate Results in 40 Minutes Without Instrument for Less Than 70 Cents

Researchers from the Xuzhou Medical University (Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China) harnessed the unique collateral activity of programmable CRISPR/Cas13a to develop CRISPR-COVID, a rapid and sensitive diagnostic for SARS-CoV-2 infection, and compared it to sequencing-based metagenomic and RT-PCR-based assays in a clinical cohort. CRISPR-COVID demonstrated a sensitivity level of near single copy and was highly specific without cross reacting to related pathogens. According to researchers, their study demonstrated that their CRISPR-based assay for COVID-19 offered shorter turn-around time and great diagnostic value, even in under-resourced settings without the need of thermal cyclers.

CRISPR-COVID takes only 40 minutes and requires no sophisticated thermo-cyclers, providing a valuable alternative to the conventional RT–PCR assay to circumvent the bottlenecks in assay turnaround time, equipment and reagent supplies for COVID-19 testing. The team noted that at research scale, the material costs of a CRISPR-COVID were less than USD 3.5, which could be dramatically reduced at production scale to less than 70 cents, making CRISPR-COVID a competitive alternative not only technologically but also financially.

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Xuzhou Medical University