Rapid-19 At-Home Covid-19 Test

Jonathan Rotherberg, the inventor and entrepreneur prophesies the future of self testing of the COVID-19 as a practical morning routine for many individuals.

The Beginning

On March 7th, the inventor and entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg announced on twitter the creation of a possibility of a low cost home test kit for the coronavirus. He has been selling portable MRIs, home ultrasounds, and is known for a pioneer of “next-generation sequencing”, which develops the advancement in the speed with which the genome could be interpreted. His breakthroughs in forensic investigation, and health has led him to become the recipient of the National Medal of technology and Innovation for achievement. Rothberg thought that his team’s work done in enzyme production was to be well suited for the contrivance of the COVID-19 diagnostic that did not rely on the expensive machines.

Progress as of Now

As of now, the closest appropriate pathogenic diagnosis is the PCR method in which the small amount of virus’s nucleic acid is traced. The “molecular” tests are able to be calibrated for an unimprovable specificity. However, this process is very costly and depends on the complex supply chain of labs for the regents and materials. The optimization of the system required centralized coordination and oversight. When the other countries rose to the occasion, they were able to use the PCR testing to track the outbreak. However, the U.S. government was limited in the number of operations that can be streamlined, as the trucks could hold so much data. His competitors have been developing antigen testings, but these aren’t very accurate. Rothberg’s predictions became true when E25Bio, a Massachusetts startup, announced that they would be anticipating an approval for their at home antigen tests.

Rothberg, however, wanted to develop a test that would have the same amount of accuracy of that of a PCR.

The Testing Procedures

The process in which the molecular test is carried out involves the initial loosening of the virus from the swab, cracking open the virus's protein shell to free the RNA inside, converting the viral RNA to DNA, and putting the DNA to be amplified of that of a detectable concentration. Rothberg decided with other scientists that the “Loop-mediated isothermal nucleic acid amplification”(LAMP) would be the best cut for the diagnostic tests. New England Biolabs published a preprint of the LAMP-based COVID-19 protocol, not a test, but a relatively simple lab procedure validated by the Chinese collaborators with the patient samples from Wuhan. Rothberg, concerned with a host of smaller details. While most tests use the long nasopharyngeal swabs, he wanted to innovatively use other swab designs that could be compatible for the nostrils. He also wanted to include the heating processes of the thermocycling of the PCR design, and went on to make some miniature heaters.

We are now awaiting for further development!