Team:Michigan/Background

Background

Media coverage, charities, and funding campaigns put great emphasis on the effects of three diseases that affect billions of lives worldwide; malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV. Communities affected by these terrible diseases commonly lack the necessary infrastructure, funding, and development to prevent and eradicate these epidemics. This vulnerability also makes these communities prone to other diseases as well, diseases that, unlike malaria, tuberculosis, or HIV, are not the recipient of world-wide efforts for eradication. These diseases, labled by the WHO as neglected tropical diseases (NTD) include Chagas disease, Onchocerciosis,and African trypenosomiasis. Infecting 1.4 billion people in 149 countries¹, they cause thousands of deaths and stunts the economic and social growth of these communities.

Many of these NTDs have safe and effective treatments and drugs that are readily available and made affordable by the combined efforts of several charities². Still, a major problem remains; many NTDs lack accurate, and affordable diagnostic assays usable in the field³. Common techniques such as immunochromatographic card tests (ITC), microscopy, and PCR tests are labor intensive and require lab work. Others, such as antigen detection tests, are expensive and, given the condition of the patient, may show false-positives when in the presence of similar antibodies.

In our project, we have created a paper-based DNA aptamer system that, when the DNA aptamer and protein bind, causes a conformational change resulting in the release of a DNA trigger, activating a RNA toehold switch, producing a reporter protein. This system can be freeze-dried to paper and, when needed, rehydrated to test a sample for the aptamer-specific protein where the aptamer may be changed to test for various proteins.