A microfluidic-integrated lateral flow recombinase polymerase amplification (MI-IF-RPA) assay for rapid COVID-19 detection

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2, currently poses an urgent global medical crisis for which there remains a lack of affordable point-of-care testing (POCT). In particular, resource-limited areas need simple and easily disseminated testing solutions to manage the outbreak. In this work, a microfluidic-integrated lateral flow recombinase polymerase amplification (MI-IF-RPA) assay was developed for rapid and sensitive detection of SARS-CoV-2, which integrates the reverse transcription recombinase polymerase amplification (RT-RPA) and a universal lateral flow (LF) dipstick detection system into a single microfluidic chip. The single-chamber RT-RPA reaction components are mixed with running buffer, and then delivered to the LF detection strips for biotin- and FAM-labelled amplified analyte sequences, which can provide easily interpreted positive or negative results.Testing requires only a simple nucleic acid extraction and loading, then incubation to obtain results, approximately 30 minutes in total. SARS-CoV-2 armored RNA particles were used to validate the MI-IF-RPA system, which showed a limit of detection of 1 copy/μL, or 30 copies per sample. Chip performance was further evaluated using clinically diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and revealed a sensitivity of 97% and specificity of 100%, highly comparable to current reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR)-based diagnostic assays. This MI-IF-RPA assay is portable and comprised of affordable materials, enabling mass production and decreased risk of contamination. Without need for specialized instrumentation and training, MI-IF-RPA assay can be used as a complement to RT-PCR for low-cost COVID-19 screening in resource-limited areas.