Breakthrough by Hong Kong students could provide a cheap and easy way for people to tell if they have the flu
- Team of 12 undergraduates from Chinese University have produced a device that can detect the flu and return results within half an hour
- The device costs less than HK$80 and won a gold medal at the iGEM 2018 Giant Jamboree in Boston
A small, portable self-testing tool that can detect flu viruses in just 30 minutes has been developed by a dozen Hong Kong university students, potentially providing the public with a cheap and easy way to tell the difference between the common cold and flu.
The device, a black box, developed by a team of 12 undergraduate students from Chinese University (CUHK), can distinguish the type of a virus by detecting its RNA target sequence, and the result is delivered within 30 minutes.
The detector device costs less than HK$80 (US$10) and each test costs about HK$8, making it affordable for the general public, said team leader Jessica Liu Yin-yin, who is a Year 3 student in mathematics and information engineering.
The invention has recently won a gold medal at the international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) 2018 Giant Jamboree in Boston, which was held from October 24 to 29.
A total of 365 teams from all over the world took part in this year’s competition, with 114 of them awarded gold medals.
“Our lab idea was to develop a tool that will emit a fluorescent light once the virus is detected,” said Liu.
For the general public, it’s very expensive to detect the flu signal using some traditional machines