As the pandemic continues to paralyze our lives and countries are counting the waves of coronavirus cases, there is a clear demmand for rapid, accurate and sensitive SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic methods. One of the promising methods is reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplificaiton, or RT-LAMP for short. It’s a biochemical nucleic acid amplification reaction that can be carried out with few reagents, basic equipment and is done by incubation at a single temperature of 60 – 65 degrees for thirty minutes.
We at the Vienna BioCenter have optimised the reaction for detecting SARS-CoV-2, implemented measures to eliminate cross-contamination contamination, assessed the sensitivity and specifity of the assay, used the reation chemistry to provide a positive/negative readout based on color change and drastically increased the sensitivity by a simple bead-enrichment protocol. These findings are described in our preprint on bioRxiv Kellner et al., 2020.
Since we understand that there’s a long way to go between reading a scientific article and implementation into clinical praxis, we’ve created this website to serve as the one-stop-shop for all protocols, information and how-to’s regarding our RT-LAMP assays in covid-19 diagnostics.
Already we have detailed ready-to-use protocols for RT-LAMP, the simple version with direct sample input, and bead-LAMP, the incredibly sensitive version of the assay. We aim to update, curate and improve these protocols as the time passes with every bit of knowledge we gain. Our sole and only aim is to enable as many people as possible to get access to accurate diagnostic tools in this crisis. Follow our website and check back often for updates on our reasearch and implementation of RT-LAMP!