Abstract: Because it has many advantages such as rapidity and accuracy, nucleic acid detection is applied for infectious disease diagnosis more and more. On the other hand, the prevention, control, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases have become a global focus for public health. While the traditional methods for pathogen testing have some major disadvantages including the need for highly skilled staff and expensive instrumentation, while procedural aspects are complex and sensitive to the environment. These shortcomings have greatly limited the application of traditional testing in on site pathogen detection. In recent years, an automatic integrated nucleic acid detection system based on real-time PCR is developed by our research group to conduct point-of-care testing of infectious pathogens. The home-made detection system collects fluorescence data in each PCR cycle through an integrated dual-channel fluorescence detection module and then real-time fluorescence curves are drawn by the software, which can tell the results of the diagnostics after some processing and analysis. In this paper, we present a new point-of-care-testing (POCT) system based on magnetic nanoparticles that enable sample in–answer out (SIAO) automated real-time testing for pathogens. Various performance tests were conducted on the instrument. Nucleic acid extraction efficiencies of SIAO versus manual systems were 95.49% and 84.33%, respectively. Real-time PCR by two methods (TaqMan-based probe and SYBR green dye) in the SIAO system was achievable, with comparable results to the manual method. Nucleic acid testing with the SIAO system was repeatable and better than with manual testing. The SIAO system had good anti-pollution performance with easy avoidance of inter-assay cross contamination. Finally, use of the SIAO system for adenovirus detection produced similar results to LightCycler2.0 system assay findings. The amplification plots and Ct values suggested similar amplification plots shapes for adenovirus testing with the SIAO system and with real-time fluorescence PCR testing and commercial instrument post-manual nucleic acid extraction. Collectively, these findings indicate that testing with the SIAO system is virtually equivalent to that of manual extraction with commercial system testing.

Biography: Nongyue He completed his PhD degree from Nanjing University, China. Initially, he joined Southeast University, Nanjing and Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing as a postdoctoral researcher. But since 2000, he emerged as a professor in State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biomedical Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing. His research interests are focused on biochips and biosensors, functional nanomaterials, controlled drug release and tissue engineering. He gained several awards like the Award for Excellent Teachers in Chinese Universities (2002), the Second Grade Award for Natural Science (2015), the Second Grade Award for Advance in Science and Technology (2014) of Chinese Ministry of Education; the Second Grade Award for Natural Science (2010, 2016), the Third Grade Award for Advance in Science and Technology (2007), and the First Grade Award for Technology Invention (2013) of Hunan Province; Chien-Shiung Wu Award (2002) of Southeast University; the First Grade Award for Advance in Science and Technology (2017) of Nanjing City, Jiang; and the First Grade Award of Endoscopic Medical Tech-Science in China (2008). He has published more than 300 scientific journal articles, 6 books, and more than 55 patents.