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In This Issue:
Hadi Shafiee, PhD, Division of Renal Medicine, BWH Department of Medicine
What is your research project about?
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has caused more than 39 million deaths, and it is still taking the lives of more than 1.5 million people per year. Expanding access to HIV therapy in developing countries has already averted more than 5.5 million AIDS-related deaths. However, some of the major challenges in expanding access to effective therapy, especially in low- and middle-income countries, is early diagnosis and regular treatment monitoring.
Monitoring HIV levels in a person’s blood, known as viral load testing, is the most accurate and preferred method to see whether treatment is working. The majority of HIV viral load testing options available today are expensive, laboratory-based, time-consuming and complex. Therefore, these tests cannot be used in low- and middle-income countries, and there is currently no commercially available point-of-care HIV viral load device that meets the requirements for these countries.
Our team is working on developing an affordable, simple and rapid diagnostic platform that can detect HIV and measure viral load in infected individuals at the point-of-care.
What is a unique aspect of your research project?
We have invented a technology that enables HIV viral load testing using a finger prick of blood placed on a disposable paper with flexible electrodes. Our microchips can be made using printing technology that is currently available to anyone, even those in low- and middle-income countries. The test is as simple as using a glucose meter, and the cost per microchip is only a few pennies. Our viral load device can potentially transmit the test results to a central laboratory or physician through a cell phone. This platform technology is unique with broad applications, and can be adopted to detect multiple infectious diseases, such as hepatitis, influenza and herpes.
How will your research project benefit people?
We have developed a technology that can potentially revolutionize HIV management globally, as it will facilitate rapid, simple and inexpensive early diagnosis of HIV infection and treatment failure for millions of people in urgent need. For example, infants born to HIV-positive mothers will greatly benefit from our technology since viral load testing is the only accurate method of diagnosing HIV infections in infants. Providing immediate treatment for HIV-positive infants has been shown to reduce deaths by 76 percent. It is essential to diagnose HIV infection rapidly in these infants so that treatment can be given right away. Our disposable microchip can provide rapid diagnostic results at the point-of-care, reducing the current turnaround viral load test time for results from over a week to under an hour. Such a test can lead to immediate initiation of HIV treatment before the mother and infant leave the clinic.