using robot to automate the COVID detection process

An Imperial team has repurposed robotic technology normally used for synthetic biology research to help with testing for COVID-19. 

Researchers at Imperial were able to repurpose an existing high-throughput robotic platform as a way to help NHS diagnostic labs avoid these bottlenecks—cutting their reliance on reagents in high demand from other testing platforms around the country, which were in very limited supply.

The team has now made full details of their work available today in a paper in the journal Nature Communications so that the technology can be adapted more widely for testing purposes.

According to the team, the study is the first to show how Biofoundries—which use the robotic platforms in synthetic biology research—could help health services around the world to rapidly respond to emerging infectious disease threats in future.

In order to repurpose the robotic platform, the Imperial team had to create new software and hardware, as well as developing new testing standards to guarantee highly reproducible results. Building on the existing antigen testing platforms in clinical use, they applied two new detection methods; based on the gene editing protein CRISPR, and a robust color change assay called LAMP.

reference

Biofoundries in rapid development and validation of automated SARS-CoV-2 clinical diagnostics. Nature Communications (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18130-3