BME Doctoral Defense: Lane Breshears

Abstract: At-home diagnostic tests are extremely useful for rural testing, providing a point of care detection of harmful pathogens without requiring extensive time, effort, and money to bring the samples back to the lab bench. These tests, commonly called rapid antigen tests but more precisely under the category of lateral flow assays (LFAs), hold exciting potential for the future of accessible healthcare. Alongside this field's potential, there remain some key limitations that should be improved upon in order to bring the theory to application. First, this discussion will look at the development of a protocol for the detection of norovirus from wastewater samples using paper microfluidics and a smartphone-based fluorescence microscope. This protocol will then be further developed for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus from clinical mouthwash samples. Using the same samples, we will explore a novel technique for indirect measurement of virus presence using the flow behavior of the liquid through the paper channel. Finally, in a progression from antibody-antigen immunoassays, we attempt to detect PFOA using the characterizations gathered from the flow behavior and added reagents. With the potential of increasing general education and accessibility of diagnostic healthcare, collectively these investigations contribute to the development of rapid and low-cost diagnostic tools for at-home and point of care use.