A team of researchers at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Ragon Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has developed a new diagnostics platform called STOP (SHERLOCK Testing in One Pot) COVID. The test can be run in an hour as a single-step reaction with minimal handling, advancing the CRISPR-based SHERLOCK diagnostic technology closer to a point-of-care or at-home testing tool. The test has not been reviewed or approved by the FDA and is currently for research purposes only.
The team began developing tests for COVID-19 in January after learning about the emergence of a new virus which has challenged the healthcare system in China. The first version of the team’s SHERLOCK-based COVID-19 diagnostics system is already being used in hospitals in Thailand to help screen patients for COVID-19 infection.
The new test is named “STOPCovid” and is based on the STOP platform. In research it has been shown to enable rapid, accurate, and highly sensitive detection of the COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 with a simple protocol that requires minimal training and uses simple, readily-available equipment, such as test tubes and water baths.
STOPCovid has been validated in research settings using nasopharyngeal swabs from patients diagnosed with COVID-19. It has also been tested successfully in saliva samples to which SARS-CoV-2 RNA has been added as a proof-of-principle.
