Development of thermostable affinity reagents for low-cost, paper-based medical diagnostics

The timely diagnosis and treatment of disease in resource-constrained settings requires the development of robust point-of-care (POC) diagnostics, which provide accurate results and can be employed by users with minimal medical training and limited access to basic infrastructure. One of the most common POC diagnostic formats is the immunochromatographic rapid diagnostic test, which traditionally uses nitrocellulose-immobilized IgG antibodies as binding proteins for the capture of disease biomarkers from patient samples. However, these antibodies are expensive to produce and structurally complex, and are prone to thermal denaturation. In contexts where continuous cold chain storage may be infeasible, the resulting loss in binding activity can manifest as diminished assay sensitivity, leading to adverse clinical outcomes and eroding patient trust in the diagnostic format.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Miller, Eric Alexander.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hadley D. Sikes.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122849

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122849