Low-cost Virus Test Offers Rapid Results in Africa - SciDev.Net

A reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) tool offers a cheap, portable, and rapid diagnostics tool for low-resource settings. SciDev.Net author Dann Okoth highlights the EXPANDIA project and the significance of this RT-LAMP development, which EXPANDIA partnered with New England Biolabs to evaluate.

Alessandro Marcello, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Virology at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), leads EXPANDIA. The RT-LAMP study analyzed the sensitivity and specificity of colorimetric RT-LAMP in real-world settings across ten Sub-Saharan African countries. Now, the team is expanding outside of COVID-19 testing and into other priority disease testing, such as dengue and Zika.

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