Research Projects

Urinary tract infection (UTI) affects around 150 million global populations annually and is one of the most outpatient infections. The use of antibiotics results in the development of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens, making it difficult and ineffective to diagnose and prescribe medication for MDR-UTI. The gold standard for detecting UTI and antibiotic-resistant pathogens is urine cultures tests, which require a laboratory setup and take 24-72 hours to grow. Many attempts at urine culture in low-resources settings have been made, but they suffer from accuracy and lack sensitivity. A simpler, low-cost, novel point-of-care diagnostic method is needed to identify MDR-UTI-causing pathogens. The lateral flow assay format is one of the best candidates for this purpose. The researchers aim to develop a prototype for conducting sensitive, accurate, and affordable point-of-care-compatible isothermal nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) for MDR-UTI. They plan to use the recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay, performed in mesophilic temperature ranges, for the identification of the most prevalent pathogens causing UTI. The paper-microfluidic device will be optimized using computational design tools and validated with experiments. The proposed RPA-LFA device aims to replace conventional laboratory techniques with a field-deployable compact version for MDR-UTI detection.