Scientific Reports (Jan 2024)

A high-performance polymer composite column for coronavirus nucleic acid purification

  • Akli Zarouri,
  • Aaron M. T. Barnes,
  • Hamada Aboubakr,
  • Vinni Thekkudan Novi,
  • Qiuchen Dong,
  • Andrew Nelson,
  • Sagar Goyal,
  • Abdennour Abbas

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51671-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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Abstract Here, we report the development of a novel polymer composite (PC) purification column and kit. The performance of the PC columns was compared to conventional silica gel (SG) columns for the purification of nucleic acids from coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, in 82 clinical samples. The results shows that PC-based purification outperforms silica gel (SG)-based purification by enabling a higher sensitivity (94%), accuracy (97%), and by eliminating false positives (100% specificity). The high specificity is critical for efficient patient triage and resource management during pandemics. Furthermore, PC-based purification exhibits three times higher analytical precision than a commonly used SG-based nucleic acid purification thereby enabling a more accurate quantification of viral loads and higher reproducibility.