CoLAMP: CRISPR-based one-pot loop-mediated isothermal amplification enables at-home diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA with nearly eliminated contamination utilizing amplicons depletion strategy

Rapid point-of-care diagnostics, essential in settings such as airport on-site testing and home-based screening, displayed important implications for infectious disease control during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. However, the deployment of simple and sensitive assays in real-life scenarios still faces the concern of aerosol contamination. Here, we report an amplicon-depleting CRISPR-based one-pot loop-mediated isothermal amplification (CoLAMP) assay for point-of-care diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. In this work, AapCas12b sgRNA is designed to recognize the activator sequence sited in the loop region of the LAMP product, which is crucial for exponential amplifi-cation. By destroying the aerosol-prone amplifiable products at the end of each amplification reaction, our design can significantly reduce the amplicons contamination that causes false positive results in point-of-care di-agnostics. For at-home self-testing, we designed a low-cost sample-to-result device for fluorescence-based visual interpretation. As well, a commercial portable electrochemical platform was deployed as a proof-of-concept of ready-to-use point-of-care diagnostic systems. The field deployable CoLAMP assay can detect as low as 0.5 copies/& mu;L of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in clinical nasopharyngeal swab samples within 40 min without the need for specialists for its operation.

Automated summary

This study presents a CRISPR-based CoLAMP assay for rapid diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, which can detect the viral RNA in clinical samples within 40 minutes with a sensitivity of 0.5 copies/μL.