An Integrated Isothermal Nucleic Acid Test for Improved Sickle-Cell Diagnosis at the Point-of-Care

Abstract Sickle-cell disease (SCD) is a life-threatening inherited blood disorder of the !-globin gene that affects over 300,000 newborns globally each year, over 90% of which occur in low- and middle- income countries. Early childhood mortality has been virtually eliminated in high-resource settings through the establishment of newborn screening programs that

enable timely diagnosis and treatment. In contrast, up to 90% of affected infants born with SCD in low-resource settings will die before age five without ever receiving a diagnosis. Current diagnostic methods are expensive and require laboratory equipment and trained personnel, making them financially and technically inaccessible to the

countries with the greatest burden of SCD. The development of a rapid, low-cost, and easy-to-use diagnostic test that can be implemented at the point-of-care (POC) could enable early diagnosis and prompt initiation of preventative treatment, potentially saving the lives of over 50 million infants born with SCD by 2050. Many in-

expensive protein-based methods have been developed and piloted, but lack of sensitivity in the presence of high fetal

hemoglobin, poor specificity in patients recently transfused, and lack of interpretability make these tests ineffective for newborn screening in settings that lack resources for confirmatory testing. Advances in isothermal amplification techniques and inexpensive paper- and plastic- based diagnostic platforms offer an opportunity to overcome existing

limitations through the development of a DNA-based diagnostic that identifies the mutation in the !-globin gene encod- ing for sickled hemoglobin in an accurate, low-cost format that can be used in low-resource settings. In collaboration with an industrial partner that specializes in developing low-cost diagnostic platforms, Axxin Pty. Ltd., and a sponsor

team based at Rice University and Texas Children's Hospital that specializes in POC diagnostic development, pediatric hematology, and evaluating technologies in low-resource settings, I will develop a novel, inexpensive (