Detecting SARS-CoV-2 in the air

Determining the amount of virus that's in the air is really important to avoid getting sick. The ultimate goal of this device is that an individual can walk into a room just with whatever they have in their hands or their backpack or their purse, collect an air sample and be able to tell if there's virus in the air within 15 minutes. This is a highly interdisciplinary project because in order to be able to do this, we need to bring together lots of expertise to sample the virus, to detect it using sophisticated methods. My part was to install the filter material in the filter holder and manually collect the air. And then give that to the next person who's going to do the extraction of what material has been collected on the filter. Once I get the eluted solution from the air sample, I mix it with my nanoparticle which is functionalized with antibodies, also with the tag molecule. Then add a lateral flow strip which also has antibodies, and let the solution wick through. The sample liquid wicks up the paper and then if there's virus in the sample, it's going to get trapped and show you a line in order to see this really with high sensitivity. We then take the paper and put it onto a special instrument with a laser. What we see on the screen is actually a fingerprint of whether that molecule, the tag, is there or not. So this is good, it's negative. A lot of other people are working on these types of devices. I think what sets us apart is that we are thinking about detecting the virus at very low, realistic levels in a background of tons of other types of particles in the air. And doing it in a way that doesn't require heavy, power hungry, noisy sampling pumps. Then eventually, we'd like to be able to put these different pieces together in a single device. This sounds exciting and promising, but we're still a few years away from being able to deploy this technology in a way where you walk into a room with this in your pocket and detect the virus.