Principal Investigator: Prof. Magdy Mahfouz
Poster Presenter: Wenjun Jiang, Zahir Ali, Norhan Hassan
Lab: Laboratory for Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology
The WHO's global initiative toward the elimination of high-risk Human Papillomaviruses (hrHPVs)-related cancers recommends DNA testing over visual inspection methods in all settings for primary cancer screening and HPV eradication by 2100. Thus, robust, sensitive, and precise diagnostic platforms are needed for the early detection of hrHPV DNA to restrain virus spread and mitigate hrHPV-related cancers. Recently, CRISPR-Cas systems have been repurposed for Point-of-Care (PoC) detection of HPV. However, multiple hrHPV types are causing different types of cancers, and there is no multiplex PoC diagnostic platform for the detection of different hrHPV types in one-pot assay.
Here, we established a CRISPR-Cas-based one-pot multiplexed diagnostic assay for the detection of hrHPVs. We harnessed AapCas12b, TccCas13a, and HheCas13a, and successfully detected HPV16, HPV18, along with an internal control in a single-pot assay with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Our module exhibits key features of early screening for multiple hrHPVs at PoC setup.