Overcoming Limited Access to Virus Infection Rapid Testing: Development of a Lateral Flow Test for SARS-CoV-2 with Locally Available Resources.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted testing inequities in developing countries. Lack of lateral flow test (LFT) manufacturing capacity was a major COVID-19 response bottleneck in low- and middle-income regions. Here we report the development of an open-access LFT for SARS-CoV-2 detection comparable to commercial tests that requires only locally available supplies. The main critical resource is a locally developed horse polyclonal antibody (pAb) whose sensitivity and selectivity are greatly enhanced by affinity purification. We demonstrate that these Abs can perform similarly to commercial monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), as well as mAbs and other pAbs developed against the same antigen. We report a workflow for test optimization using nasopharyngeal swabs collected for RT-qPCR, spiked with the

SUBMITTER: Peri Ibanez ES 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11431090 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature