| 1. |
- Chondrogiannis, Georgios, et al.
(författare)
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Nitrocellulose-bound achromopeptidase for point-of-care nucleic acid tests
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Nature. - 2045-2322. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Enzymes are the cornerstone of modern biotechnology. Achromopeptidase (ACP) is a well-known enzyme that hydrolyzes a number of proteins, notably proteins on the surface of Gram-positive bacteria. It is therefore used for sample preparation in nucleic acid tests. However, ACP inhibits DNA amplification which makes its integration difficult. Heat is commonly used to inactivate ACP, but it can be challenging to integrate heating into point-of-care devices. Here, we use recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) together with ACP, and show that when ACP is immobilized on nitrocellulose paper, it retains its enzymatic function and can easily and rapidly be activated using agitation. The nitrocellulose-bound ACP does, however, not leak into the solution, preventing the need for deactivation through heat or by other means. Nitrocellulose-bound ACP thus opens new possibilities for paper-based Point-of-Care (POC) devices.
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| 2. |
- Chondrogiannis, Georgios, et al.
(författare)
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Paper-Based Bacterial Lysis Enables Sample-to-Answer Home-based DNA Testing
- 2023
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Ingår i: Advanced Materials Technologies. - : Wiley. - 2365-709X. ; 8:4, s. 2201004-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) is the gold standard for infectious disease diagnostics. Currently NAATs are mainly limited to centralized laboratories, while paper-based antigen tests are used for rapid home-based diagnostics. DNA extraction, the initial sample preparation step in NAATs, remains a bottleneck that hinders its development toward home-based kits. This step requires the use of compounds detrimental to the enzymes in downstream DNA amplification. Here, this work overcomes this bottleneck by immobilizing the enzyme achromopeptidase (ACP) on nitrocellulose, to both store and enable the separation of the enzymes from the other steps. This work provides proof-of-concept that immobilized ACP is effective at lysis and release of amplifiable DNA from gram-positive Staphylococcus epidermidis and enables the use of the lysate directly for DNA amplification, without the need for heat deactivation of the enzyme. This sample preparation method requires only incubation at 37 °C and mild agitation, which allows to implement it with fully disposable and affordable equipment. Consequently, this work enables to combine the paper-based DNA extraction method with the isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) followed by lateral flow detection to demonstrate a sample-to-answer NAAT packaged as an instrument free self-test kit expanding the capabilities of home-testing beyond antigen tests.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Gaudenzi, Giulia, et al.
(författare)
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Point-of-Care Approaches for Meningitis Diagnosis in a Low-Resource Setting (Southwestern Uganda) : Observational Cohort Study Protocol of the "PI-POC" Trial
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Medical Internet Research. - : JMIR Publications Inc.. - 1438-8871. ; 22:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: A timely differential diagnostic is essential to identify the etiology of central nervous system (CNS) infections in children, in order to facilitate targeted treatment, manage patients, and improve clinical outcome. Objective: The Pediatric Infection-Point-of-Care (PI-POC) trial is investigating novel methods to improve and strengthen the differential diagnostics of suspected childhood CNS infections in low-income health systems such as those in Southwestern Uganda. This will be achieved by evaluating (1) a novel DNA-based diagnostic assay for CNS infections, (2) a commercially available multiplex PCR-based meningitis/encephalitis (ME) panel for clinical use in a facility-limited laboratory setting, (3) proteomics profiling of blood from children with severe CNS infection as compared to outpatient controls with fever yet not severely ill, and (4) Myxovirus resistance protein A (MxA) as a biomarker in blood for viral CNS infection. Further changes in the etiology of childhood CNS infections after the introduction of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae will be investigated. In addition, the carriage and invasive rate of Neisseria meningitidis will be recorded and serotyped, and the expression of its major virulence factor (polysaccharide capsule) will be investigated. Methods: The PI-POC trial is a prospective observational study of children including newborns up to 12 years of age with clinical features of CNS infection, and age-/sex-matched outpatient controls with fever yet not severely ill. Participants are recruited at 2 Pediatric clinics in Mbarara, Uganda. Cerebrospinal fluid (for cases only), blood, and nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs (for both cases and controls) sampled at both clinics are analyzed at the Epicentre Research Laboratory through gold-standard methods for CNS infection diagnosis (microscopy, biochemistry, and culture) and a commercially available ME panel for multiplex PCR analyses of the cerebrospinal fluid. An additional blood sample from cases is collected on day 3 after admission. After initial clinical analyses in Mbarara, samples will be transported to Stockholm, Sweden for (1) validation analyses of a novel nucleic acid-based POC test, (2) biomarker research, and (3) serotyping and molecular characterization of S. pneumoniae and N. meningitidis. Results: A pilot study was performed from January to April 2019. The PI-POC trial enrollment of patients begun in April 2019 and will continue until September 2020, to include up to 300 cases and controls. Preliminary results from the PI-POC study are expected by the end of 2020. Conclusions: The findings from the PI-POC study can potentially facilitate rapid etiological diagnosis of CNS infections in low-resource settings and allow for novel methods for determination of the severity of CNS infection in such environment.
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| 5. |
- Hanze, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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Toward Continuous Molecular Testing Using Gold-Coated Threads as Multi-Target Electrochemical Biosensors
- 2023
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Ingår i: Biosensors. - : MDPI AG. - 2079-6374. ; 13:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Analytical systems based on isothermal nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) paired with electroanalytical detection enable cost-effective, sensitive, and specific digital pathogen detection for various in situ applications such as point-of-care medical diagnostics, food safety monitoring, and environmental surveillance. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on gold surfaces are reliable platforms for electroanalytical DNA biosensors. However, the lack of automation and scalability often limits traditional chip-based systems. To address these challenges, we propose a continuous thread-based device that enables multiple electrochemical readings on a functionalized working electrode Au thread with a single connection point. We demonstrate the possibility of rolling the thread on a spool, which enables easy manipulation in a roll-to-roll architecture for high-throughput applications. As a proof of concept, we have demonstrated the detection of recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) isothermally amplified DNA from the two toxic microalgae species Ostreopsis cf. ovata and Ostreopsis cf. siamensis by performing a sandwich hybridization assay (SHA) with electrochemical readout.
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| 6. |
- Hard, Joanna, et al.
(författare)
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Conbase : a software for unsupervised discovery of clonal somatic mutations in single cells through read phasing
- 2019
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Ingår i: Genome Biology. - : BMC. - 1465-6906 .- 1474-760X. ; 20
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Accurate variant calling and genotyping represent major limiting factors for downstream applications of single-cell genomics. Here, we report Conbase for the identification of somatic mutations in single-cell DNA sequencing data. Conbase leverages phased read data from multiple samples in a dataset to achieve increased confidence in somatic variant calls and genotype predictions. Comparing the performance of Conbase to three other methods, we find that Conbase performs best in terms of false discovery rate and specificity and provides superior robustness on simulated data, in vitro expanded fibroblasts and clonal lymphocyte populations isolated directly from a healthy human donor.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Khaliliazar, Shirin, et al.
(författare)
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Woven Electroanalytical Biosensor for Nucleic AcidAmplification Tests
- 2021
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Ingår i: Advanced Healthcare Materials. - : Wiley-VCH Verlagsgesellschaft. - 2192-2640 .- 2192-2659. ; 10:11, s. 2100034-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fiber-based biosensors enable a new approach in analytical diagnosticdevices. The majority of textile-based biosensors, however, rely oncolorimetric detection. Here a woven biosensor that integrates microfluidicsstructures in combination with an electroanalytical readout based on athiol-self-assembled monolayer (SAM) for Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing,NAATs is shown. Two types of fiber-based electrodes are systematicallycharacterized: pure gold microwires (bond wire) and off-the-shelf plasmagold-coated polyester multifilament threads to evaluate their potential to formSAMs on their surface and their electrochemical performance in woven textile.A woven electrochemical DNA (E-DNA) sensor using a SAM-based stem-loopprobe-modified gold microwire is fabricated. These sensors can specificallydetect unpurified, isothermally amplified genomic DNA of Staphylococcusepidermidis (10 copies/μL) by recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA).This work demonstrates that textile-based biosensors have the potential forintegrating and being employed as automated, sample-to-answer analyticaldevices for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics.
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| 9. |
- Landsverk, Ole J. B., et al.
(författare)
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Antibody-secreting plasma cells persist for decades in human intestine
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Experimental Medicine. - NewYork, USA : Rockefeller University Press. - 0022-1007 .- 1540-9538. ; 214:2, s. 309-317
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plasma cells (PCs) produce antibodies that mediate immunity after infection or vaccination. In contrast to PCs in the bone marrow, PCs in the gut have been considered short lived. In this study, we studied PC dynamics in the human small intestine by cell-turnover analysis in organ transplants and by retrospective cell birth dating measuring carbon-14 in genomic DNA. We identified three distinct PC subsets: a CD19(+) PC subset was dynamically exchanged, whereas of two CD19(-) PC subsets, CD45(+) PCs exhibited little and CD45(-) PCs no replacement and had a median age of 11 and 22 yr, respectively. Accumulation of CD45(-) PCs during ageing and the presence of rotavirus-specific clones entirely within the CD19(-) PC subsets support selection and maintenance of protective PCs for life in human intestine.
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| 10. |
- Mold, Jeff E., et al.
(författare)
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Cell generation dynamics underlying naive T-cell homeostasis in adult humans
- 2019
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Ingår i: PLoS biology. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1544-9173 .- 1545-7885. ; 17:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Thymic involution and proliferation of naive T cells both contribute to shaping the naive T-cell repertoire as humans age, but a clear understanding of the roles of each throughout a human life span has been difficult to determine. By measuring nuclear bomb test-derived C-14 in genomic DNA, we determined the turnover rates of CD4(+) and CD8(+) naive T-cell populations and defined their dynamics in healthy individuals ranging from 20 to 65 years of age. We demonstrate that naive T-cell generation decreases with age because of a combination of declining peripheral division and thymic production during adulthood. Concomitant decline in T-cell loss compensates for decreased generation rates. We investigated putative mechanisms underlying age-related changes in homeostatic regulation of CD4+ naive T-cell turnover, using mass cytometry to profile candidate signaling pathways involved in T-cell activation and proliferation relative to CD31 expression, a marker of thymic proximity for the CD4+ naive T-cell population. We show that basal nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappa B) phosphorylation positively correlated with CD31 expression and thus is decreased in peripherally expanded naive T-cell clones. Functionally, we found that NF-kappa B signaling was essential for naive T-cell proliferation to the homeostatic growth factor interleukin (IL)-7, and reduced NF-kappa B phosphorylation in CD4(+)CD31(-) naive T cells is linked to reduced homeostatic proliferation potential. Our results reveal an age-related decline in naive T-cell turnover as a putative regulator of naive T-cell diversity and identify a molecular pathway that restricts proliferation of peripherally expanded naive T-cell clones that accumulate with age.
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