SINGAPORE: Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, has received a grant from the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) COVID-19 Research fund for the acceleration of research and development of rapid paper-based serological and diagnostic tests for COVID-19. The 1-year grant is part of NMRC’s support for COVID-19 related research, and will focus on developing rapid tests based on protein detection that will overcome challenges and bottlenecks faced by existing diagnostic tests.
As governments worldwide continue to wage war against the novel coronavirus and the widespread implementation of treatment and vaccines more than a year away, an important approach in the multi-pronged strategy to fight the pandemic, is the ability to rapidly detect and treat infected individuals to prevent exponential spreading. Presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmissions present difficult challenges in containing the virus.
