Webinar  /  November 04, 2021, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CET

Webinar: Microfluidic solutions for POC testing - basis for new concepts to prevent the spread of infectious diseases

Speaker: Dr. Christian Freese

The Covid-19 crises demonstrated that state of the art PCR-based Point-of-care (POC) testing systems have had no use in preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic. This is primarily an effect of business models based on proprietary technologies and regulatory hurdles which do not effectively utilize the full potential of industrial manufacturing capacities. Consequently, tests are expensive, time-to-market proved to be many month and test capacity is limited. 

The development of POC technologies based on microfluidic solutions has a long history at Fraunhofer IMM. Current results using commercially available assays for SARS-CoV-2 detection has demonstrated the outstanding performance of our POC-PCR-technologies with comparable results in sensitivity and specificity to normal PCR systems with a test duration of 15 minutes and less. The additional advantage are cheap components for the construction of our ultrafast POC-PCR technology. 

Nevertheless, maximizing the contribution of such systems to contain the spread of dis-eases needs a fast availability of such systems and consumables at the point of need. In addition to that prizes of devices and consumables have to be further decreased. 

A concept to transfer that vision to reality is the mission of our current OPEN-POCT pro-ject funded by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate within the framework of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF REACT-EU). The webinar will give you in overview of our POC technologies, application scenarios and our current OPEN-POCT project which needs your contribution!