(306b) Detection of Water-Borne Pathogens Using a Smartphone-Based Portable Isothermal Amplification Platform

Waterborne pathogens (bacteria, virus, and protozoa) are significant contributors to the global health burden, resulting in an estimated 2.2 million deaths annually. Repeated disease outbreaks (Escherichia Coli, Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella, Vibrio cholerae, Giandia, etc.) emphasize the dire need for a rapid and inexpensive diagnostic tools for reliable and efficient countermeasures. Although water treatment must continue to be at the forefront of such a countermeasure, it is critical to develop portable and inexpensive systems that scale for widespread deployment and implementation to directly detect the pathogens at the water sources (especially in resource-limited areas). We report an inexpensive and portable smartphone-based fluorescence imaging system for rapid detection of water-borne pathogens via Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) of specific nucleic acid targets in disposable microfluidic chips. The microfluidic chips are machined with a desktop CNC machine with several optically clear pockets to house water samples. A low powered thermal management system ensures uniform heating of the samples for 30 minutes after which the fluorescence signals of the amplified targets are quantified with a high degree of confidence using a chromaticity-luminance analysis¹ to determine the presence/absence of pathogenic genetic material. Such low cost integrated nucleic acid amplification and fluorescence imaging system has the potential to simultaneously detect multiple pathogenic microorganisms. When implemented on a larger scale, such a technology could provide quantitative microbial risk assessment that evaluates the location-based likelihood of pathogen contamination resulting in rapid and reliable decision-making around such scenarios.

(1) Priye, A.; Ball, C. S.; Meagher, R. J. Analytical chemistry 2018, 90, 12385-12389.