X. Wang, S. Yao
Atom Bioworks,
United States
Keywords: pattern-recognition enabled sensing and therapeutics, designer DNA Architecture, point-of-care testing
Summary:
Many infectious diseases, such as the new 2019 Coronavirus, present unique spatial patterns of antigens on their surfaces. The nature’s immune system uses pattern recognition to detect and attack these disease, inspired by that, we developed the first-in-class programmable DNA nanostructure, enabled by our PEST (Pattern-recognition Enabled Sensing and Therapeutics) platform, that can act as a template to display multiple binding motifs with precise spatial pattern-recognition properties, yielding exceptional sensing and potent viral inhibitory capabilities as well as cell/tumor-targeted drug-delivery potentials (Designer DNA architecture offers precise and multivalent spatial pattern-recognition for viral sensing and inhibition, Nature Chemistry 12, 26-35, (2020) a cover story). To showcase the platform’s sample uses cases, we demonstrated that the PEST-based diagnosis can enable point-of-care testing (POCT) of Dengue virus (DENV) in patient samples with RT-PCR equivalent sensitivity in