Inexpensive, scalable technologies for pathogen detection and surveillance are crucial to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we introduce Combinatorial Arrayed Reactions for Multiplexed Evaluation of Nucleic acids (CARMEN), a technology that enables parallelized CRISPR-Cas13 detection with up to 5,000 crRNA-target pairs tested in a single assay. CARMEN increases multiplexing and throughput while simultaneously decreasing the reagent cost per test by &gt;300-fold. Using CARMEN-Cas13, we designed and extensively tested a 169-plex assay that simultaneously differentiates all human-associated viruses with ≥10 available genome sequences. CARMEN-Cas13 also enables comprehensive subtyping of influenza A strains and multiplexed identification of dozens of HIV drug-resistance mutations. More recently, we have developed a CARMEN respiratory virus panel (RVP) for the differential diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses. In addition, we have developed SHINE, a technology for point-of-need detection of SARS-CoV-2. SHINE, the CARMEN RVP, and other such approaches can catalyze the rapid molecular diagnosis and characterization of wide-ranging pathogens, greatly benefiting patients and public health.

Cas13-based technologies for detecting COVID-19

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.