Detection of Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpesvirus nucleic acids using a smartphone accessory

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is an infectious cancer occurring in immune-compromised patients, caused by Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpesvirus (KSHV). Our vision is to simplify the process of KS diagnosis through the creation of a smartphone based point-of-care system capable of yielding an actionable diagnostic readout starting from a raw biopsy sample. In this work we develop the sensing mechanism for the overall system, a smartphone accessory capable of detecting KSHV nucleic acids. The accessory reads out microfluidic chips filled with a colorimetric nanoparticle assay targeted at KSHV. We calculate that our final device can read out gold nanoparticle solutions with an accuracy of 0.05 OD, and we demonstrate that it can detect DNA sequences from KSHV down to 1 nM. We believe that through integration with our previously developed components, a smartphone based system like the one studied here can provide accurate detection information, as well as a simple platform for field based clinical diagnosis and research.