As the world faces the challenge of controlling and restraining the spread of COVID-19, new innovations are developed at a rapid pace. In a recently published paper in Nature Scientific Reports, sponsored by American company SpectraPass LLC, the authors have reported a new method for use of MALDI-TOF-MS for rapid high-throughput screeing for COVID-19.
By combining the advantages of Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF)—mass spectrometry (MS) with machine learning (ML), the authors have made it possible to rapidly detect COVID-19 within 20 minutes, without sacrificing test accuracy or sensitivity. The precision matches or outperforms many of the available COVID-19 tests, with 98.3% accuracy achieved for positive COVID-19 tests and 96% for negative tests while keeping cost and time-to-result down and reducing demand on already strained supply chains for PCR testing. This ground-breaking outcome offers immense potential for rapid screening of large number of individuals, which would be an important step in societies re-opening.
Read the entire paper HERE
Read the snapshot of the innovation HERE
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