Jin Montclare, NYU Tandon Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is turning her expertise in protein engineering to combat a pandemic. Her team at NYU has created a test strip coated with proteins engineered to recognize either the COVID-19 virus or specific antibodies, making it a unique, dual-purpose test, called TAP.
With the expediency of a home pregnancy test, the TAP strips are designed to work with a finger prick of blood and to change color immediately so that results are immediate. With hopes that a first-generation test may be ready in six months, the team recently received an NSF I-Corp grant for $50K to commercialize the TP at home-test.
FierceElectronics recently interviewed Montclare via email about her work with TAP to learn more about the challenges and road to implementation.
FE: Where are you today in the development of your paper-based COVID-19 test strip? Are you on track for this to be ready by end of year?
Montclare: We are currently finalizing the protein engineering to detect COVID-19 virus at high accuracy. At this stage, we will have produced our first prototype before the end of the year. The test will be ready at the end of the year. At what scale depends on near future funding.
FE: What are the most significant challenges you had to (or will have to) overcome in its development?
Montclare: The most significant challenge thus far has been troubleshooting the production of a novel protein in a short time frame. Now that we have overcome some of these hurdles, we expect the next challenge to be attaining a facile means to mass production of our tests.
FE: What is the accuracy of this kind of a test?
Montclare: We will be benchmarking against existing tests and aiming for accuracy that is comparable to, for example, nasopharyngeal swabs and antibody tests.
FE: Seems like there are a lot of researchers working on similar technologies – how does this tend to shake out in the end?
Montclare: Although technologies are similar, approaches tend to be very different and require independent research plans. Speaking for our group, we have sought collaborations with research partners that are more familiar with aspects of the technology. Our group does not have expertise in or that allow us to merge our technology into a new, joint project.
FE: Does the paper strip have any kind of printed electronics on it, or is this purely a chemical test?
Montclare: Our test is purely a chemical test relying on engineered detection proteins.
FE: Could you foresee in a future version that would leverage printed electronics for augmented functionality of the test?
Montclare: Yes. There are several advantages we can see to introducing an electronic function to the test. However, more functionality introduces greater expense and our main goal right now is to deliver a simple and accurate test that will be accessible to everyone.
FE: What sort of cost goals are there for a test like this?
Montclare: Building on our goal to make this test universally accessible, we have organized our research around test production that will be scalable and inexpensive so as to be affordable even in low-resource settings.
FE: Is manufacturing straightforward or will issues there need to be worked out?
Montclare: We hope to have reduced certain challenges of manufacturing and scale-up in our design, but we expect manufacturing to have its own set of troubleshooting issues which we are trying to anticipate and prepare for. At the moment we are prepared for scale-up within our lab setting.
FE: What are the paths to commercialization for this test?
Montclare: For commercialization, we will first need to seek FDA approval and emergency use authorization (EUA). While we produce what we can from our own resources, we will seek investment for scale-up resources or a partner that has them.
Editor’s Note: Jin Montclare will be speaking about the TAP dual purpose COVID-19 test on a panel, “Innovative Sensing Technologies Waging War on a Virus” during MedTech Innovation Week a digital event series taking place October 19-22, 2021. For more information and to register for your free pass click here.
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