Canada funds development of COVID-19 ‘lab-in-a-box’
OTTAWA — Canadian researchers are developing a “lab-in-a-box” that could make it cheaper and faster to diagnose cases of the novel coronavirus, particularly in remote areas of the world.
The project received $1 million from the International Development Research Centre as part of the $27 million in coronavirus research the federal government announced Friday.
The technology being developed by Keith Pardee, an assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Toronto, aims to make it possible for people in remote areas to test for the virus very quickly. Xinyu Liu, an associate professor of engineering at the university, is working to make the test portable.
The ultimate goal is to create a kit that would fit into a container about twice the size of a standard moving box, which would contain the diagnostics and hardware to perform 14,000 COVID-19 tests.