Stimuli-Responsive Valving Mechanisms for Paper-Based Diagnostics

Rapid identification of disease-causing pathogens at the point-of-care enables immediate treatment and infection control. However, existing rapid diagnostic devices fail to detect the low concentrations of pathogens present in the early stages of infection, causing delayed and even incorrect treatment. A delay in antibiotic treatment of as few as 24 hours after infection onset will drastically decrease a patient’s chance of survival. The transport of a patient’s sample to a centralized testing laboratory can contribute hours to this delay. For instance, the most sensitive assay, nucleic acid detection, can only be performed at centralized laboratories. The multistep sample preparation and costly instrumentation required to analyze samples has prohibited nucleic acid detection assays from reaching the point-of-care. There remains a critical need to bring rapid and sensitive pathogen identification technologies out of the laboratory to ensure effective treatment.