Portable electroanalytical nucleic acid amplification tests using printed circuit boards and open-source electronics.

The realization of electrochemical nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) at the point of care (POC) is highly desirable, but it remains a challenge given their high cost and lack of true portability/miniaturization. Here we show that mass-produced, industrial standardized, printed circuit boards (PCBs) can be repurposed to act as near-zero cost electrodes for self-assembled monolayer-based DNA biosensing, and further integration with a custom-designed and low-cost portable potentiostat. To show the analytical capability of this system, we developed a NAAT using isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification, bypassing the need of thermal cyclers, followed by an electrochemical readout relying on a sandwich hybridization assay.

A disposable, wearable, flexible, stitched textile electrochemical biosensing platform.

Wearable sensors are a fast growing and exciting research area, the success of smart watches are a great example of the utility and demand for wearable sensing systems. The current state of the art routinely uses expensive and bulky equipment designed for long term use. There is a need for cheap and disposable wearable sensors to make single use measurements, primarily in the area of biomarker detection.