One of the students whose work was published in our 8th edition of FIELDS was James Elliff from the school of Applied Sciences.

We asked James to tell us a bit more about the research below and you can read the full article here:

“My research investigated different options when it came to rapid testing for Covid-19. When this project was under way in 2021, there was still a lot of unknowns regarding Covid-19 and mass population testing. This project investigated whether a latex agglutination assay would be able to be used as a rapid test, whilst also boasting similar sensitivity and specificity values as RT-PCR. Dyed microspheres were coated with antibodies to the Covid-19 spike protein. Various concentrations of the spike protein were used to assess this method.

Using various analytical methods, it was determined that the latex agglutination assay was successful in detecting the spike protein into a nanogram range (0.000000001g). Further investigation was needed to assess the threshold that could be detected. To conclude, a rapid diagnostic test for Covid-19 was developed that was easier to carry out than RT-PCR and could potentially be implemented in lower income countries.”