Greetings to you all!
Lately, there has been a growing interest in the open hardware community in fabricating devices to measure nucleic acid amplification in real-time.
Some of the most recent projects are:
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The Ninja qPCR was designed by @shingohisakawa team to perform Real-Time PCR by ~300€. It is getting adapted to a more affordable real-time isothermal version (~50€), the ninja qLAMP.
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The qPocket PCR is being designed by @gaudi at gaudilabs. He is experimenting with webcams to measure fluorescence, which presents exciting opportunities to multiplex different targets in a single amplification and reduce the number of sensors per device.
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The soon-to-be-released open qLAMP device is a joint project by openFIESTA, CRI and the Open Bioeconomy Lab. It will allow portable isothermal amplification to be measured in real-time for €35.
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In Chile, the portable amplifier of the Lab de Tecnologías Libres allows real-time amplification of 4 PCR reactions.
There is a trend to move from traditional heat and temperature-based amplifications to isothermal solutions. As they do not require thermocycling, they allow hardware simplification and increased efficiency; the rate of heating and cooling no longer dictates the efficiency and speed of the system.
This interest group was created spontaneously around the telegram chat “globalLAMP”. We are happy to receive new members with fresh ideas and designs to geek and test, or just people that want to learn and experiment. Together, we can characterize which solutions work best in which situations and gain collective knowledge that future projects can implement in the field. We are starting to create and document final products simultaneously that we will on their production and deployment along the different GOSH communities working on the ground (or helping them to produce their own devices in local maker spaces).
If you are interested in this kind of research, we encourage you to join us on telegram and share your designs with the community!