NEJM: Zhang Feng's team released the simple CRISPR new crown detection version 2.0 to improve detection sensitivity

Today, Professor Zhang Feng, a renowned scholar at the Broad Institute, together with his partners, announced their further improvement of the new coronavirus detection process based on CRISPR technology.
This process, known as STOPCovid.V2, comes after Zhang Feng's team and its partners announced a simple new coronavirus detection process called STOPCovid, which does not require the purification of RNA from patient samples and completes the chemical reaction steps required to detect the new coronavirus in a test tube.
version 2.0 of STOPCovid builds on the original test and further improves stopCovid.V2 detection sensitivity by adding RNA from the magnetic bead-rich sample during sample preparation.
in the initial STOPCovid testing process, Zhang Feng's team combined the iso-warm PCR step of amplification of RNA numbers with a chemical reaction using Casase to detect specific sequences of the new coronavirus in the same test tube.
this test step does not require a complex instrument, only a constant temperature reaction of 60 degrees Celsius, you can read the test results through the side-flow test paper.
, however, in further tests, the researchers found that only 60.5 percent of patients tested positive for traditional RT-PCR were found in this simple version of the process.
To improve the sensitivity of the test, STOPCovid.v2's process included steps to collect new coronavirus RNA in the nasopharyngeal swab through magnetic beads, using magnetic beads used in ordinary laboratories to collect all viral RNA contained in the nasopharyngeal swab as the starting material for the reaction, and the researchers streamlined the process of collecting RNA from the magnetic beads, removing the ethanol cleaning and wasting process and allowing the entire RNA-rich process to take no more than 15 minutes.
a blind test conducted at the University of Washington by stopCovid.V2 (Photo: Resources1), researchers tested 202 new coronavirus-positive and 200 samples of new coronavirus-negative nasopharyngeal swabs.
found that STOPCovid.V2 was 93.1 percent sensitive and 98.5 percent specific.
positive sample takes only 15-45 minutes to get results.
stopCovid.V2 test results, B: new coronavirus-positive sample; C: new coronavirus-negative sample, red dotted line to determine whether the sample is positive or negative threshold (Photo source: Reference 1) Researchers said in an article that this simplified version of stopCovid.V2 process is suitable for clinical laboratories without complex instruments.
, the researchers also developed a smartphone APP that helps testers interpret the results of side-flow test paper.
References: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Detection of SARS-CoV-2 with SHERLOCK One-Pot Testing. NEJM, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2026172 Follow Medicinal Conde WeChat Public No