UMBC’s Dipanjan Pan develops rapid diagnostic test for virus

A team led by UMBC’s Dipanjan Pan has developed an experimental diagnostic test to rapidly detect the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19, potentially as early as the first day of infection. Researchers designed the test to show results visually, through a color change visible with the naked eye when the virus is present. Unlike other tests, it does not require advanced laboratory techniques or tools. The American Chemical Society recently published their paper on the technique in the journal ACS Nano. 

Pan is both a professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering at UMBC and professor of diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine and pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). His co-authors included UMSOM Pan Lab researchers Parikshit Moitra and Maha Alafeef, and UMBC faculty research assistant Ketan Dighe. The work also included Matthew B. Frieman, a UMSOM faculty member from the Virology Institute. 

Like some other diagnostic tests, this one starts with a nasal swab or saliva sample. After the sample is retrieved, a technician extracts RNA from it through a 10-minute process. This process then uses a biosensor molecule attached to gold nanoparticles to detect a particular protein unique to the virus. When the molecule attaches to the protein, the gold nanoparticles respond by causing a chemical used in the test to turn blue.

As recent media reports have revealed, current tests that are used to diagnose COVID-19 are not always reliable, with high rates of false negatives and false positives. Pan hopes the design of this new diagnostic test will avoid some of these pitfalls. 

“Many of the diagnostic tests currently on the market cannot detect the virus until several days after infection. For this reason, they have a significant rate of false negative results,” he explains. A test that can detect the presence of the virus sooner after infection would avoid this issue.