A simple, inexpensive device for nucleic acid amplification without electricity-toward instrument-free molecular diagnostics in low-resource settings.

Background: Molecular assays targeted to nucleic acid (NA) markers are becoming increasingly important to medical diagnostics. However, these are typically confined to wealthy, developed countries; or, to the national reference laboratories of developing-world countries. There are many infectious diseases that are endemic in low-resource settings (LRS) where the lack of simple, instrument-free, NA diagnostic tests is a critical barrier to timely treatment.

Non-instrumented nucleic acid amplification (NINA): instrument-free molecular malaria diagnostics for low-resource settings.

We have achieved the first complete, non-instrumented nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) using a calcium oxide heat source thermally linked to an engineered phase change material. These two components alone maintain a thermal profile suitable for the loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay. Starting with computational fluid dynamics analysis, we identified nominal geometry for the exothermic reaction chamber, phase change material chamber, thermal insulation, and packaging.