Team:Hong Kong-CUHK

Influenza A is a rapid-changing disease that causes 5,000,000 deaths annually worldwide. Challenges of disease control in the modern world with high population mobility remains at the speed and accuracy of diagnosis. However, nowadays influenza A subtyping method rely greatly on RT-PCR, which requires a long time, expertise and laboratory space. Meanwhile, a novel type of riboswitch, namely Toehold Switch, shows its potential in subtyping Influenza A with quicker detection and lower production cost.

By combining test paper and Toehold Switch, a rapid on-site detection kit for Influenza A is designed and under investigation. It has a high potential to be used widely in, but not limited to, animal farms, boarder inspections and schools wherever expertise and laboratory equipment are not readily available. With the help of our software, traditional tedious work of manual design of toehold switch is minimized, providing the kit with higher adaptability.

We hope that our project can:

Stop Influenza A pandemic early by a more accurate and rapid detection;
Ease the stress on public health service when disease attacks, especially in less developed countries;
and Provide an experience to the development of test kit of other dangerous diseases.

Our project showed novelty in the construction of program for toehold switch design, and combination of Toehold switch and test paper for Influenza A detection. The kit has several advantages over existing diagnostic methods:(i) Lower production cost;(ii) Rapid detection;(iii) One-site detection;(iv) Intuitive readout;(v) No pre-analytical sample treatment. So it has high potential to be applied on diagnosis and preventive check on immigrants and poultry to protect life and property from influenza A pandemics.

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