i-sense, a research collaboration supported by our BRC, has developed a promising new approach to detect immunity to Ebola virus. The new application has been established by researchers from UCL and Imperial College London.
The i-sense lateral flow test detects proteins that fight against bacteria and viruses - IgG antibodies, indicating immunity to Ebola. The identification of IgG antibodies may help understand exposure to the different strains of the Ebola virus, enable detection of immunity in the early stages of recovery, and potentially benefit the detection of asymptomatic infections and pre-vaccination assessment.
Since the major Ebola outbreak in 2014, when nearly 29,000 people were infected, a wide number of diagnostic tools have been developed to allow rapid diagnosis of patients. However, detection of antibodies is still performed using expensive, time consuming lab-based equipment.The i-sense test only takes 15 minutes to give results, allowing infected individuals to get faster access to treatment and care, and prevent further infection.
Using a lateral flow test similar to a pregnancy test and smartphones, to track, test and treat infectious diseases, together allows for better disease surveillance and outbreak control.
Unlike similar tests, i-sense also classifies this protein against two additional viral proteins, which could be used to count the number of populations exposed to the deadly virus, as well as predict acute patient survival rate.
Professor Rachel McKendry, Professor of Biomedical Nanotechnology at UCL and Director of i-sense said: “This research represents a major milestone for i-sense and harnesses the power of mobile phones and paper microfluidic tests to rapidly analyse a patient’s immune response to Ebola with geo-located information to map disease ‘hotspots’ in Uganda,”
The study was published in ACS Nano and future work will be aimed towards developing a test to use a finger prick blood sample in order to simplify the process and enable ‘on the spot’ results.
Imagre credit: CDC Global, source: Flickr
