RESEARCH NEWS
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Lab-on-a-chip technology being developed in Foundation Distinguished Professor Steven Soper’s laboratory seeks to create a reliable, rapid, inexpensive home COVID-19 test.
At-Home COVID-19 Test Developed at KU Moves Toward Production by Joel Mathis
W
ith the United States facing another surge of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant, an at-home test for the virus developed by researchers at the University of Kansas is moving toward commercial production. The aim is to launch the product in early 2022. “They’re building the handheld instrument right now,” said Steven Soper, a Foundation Distinguished Professor with appointments in the School of Engineering in the Mechanical Engineering Department and Department of Chemistry. “Following our successful proof-of-concept testing as a result of funding from the NIH, it will go into production and marketed by BioFluidica.” Soper’s team, which includes a half-dozen graduate students in bioengineering and chemistry, has been working
on the project since early June 2020. They have been repurposing “lab on a chip” technology he had previously developed to give doctors simple tools to more easily and quickly diagnose conditions ranging from stroke to a variety of cancers so that it could be used to select SARS-CoV-2 virus particles directly from saliva samples and count them one at a time. At-home users would put saliva on the test chip, then use a hand-held electronic reader — about the size of an iPhone — to analyze the results. The whole process would take around 15 minutes. Soper’s group — including his private company, BioFluidica — is working with an undisclosed company that has experience in large-scale medical manufacturing to produce the chip consumables and the handheld units. Users KANSAS ENGINEER | 7
