TY - JOUR T1 - A Modular Microarray Imaging System for Highly Specific COVID-19 Antibody Testing JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.05.22.111518 SP - 2020.05.22.111518 AU - Per Niklas Hedde AU - Timothy J. Abram AU - Aarti Jain AU - Rie Nakajima AU - Rafael Ramiro de Assis AU - Trevor Pearce AU - Algis Jasinskas AU - Melody N. Toosky AU - Saahir Khan AU - Philip L. Felgner AU - Enrico Gratton AU - Weian Zhao Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/23/2020.05.22.111518.abstract N2 - To detect the presence of antibodies in blood against SARS-CoV-2 in a highly sensitive and specific manner, here we describe a robust, inexpensive ($200), 3D-printable portable imaging platform (TinyArray imager) that can be deployed immediately in areas with minimal infrastructure to read coronavirus antigen microarrays (CoVAMs) that contain a panel of antigens from SARS-CoV-2, SARS-1, MERS, and other respiratory viruses. Application includes basic laboratories and makeshift field clinics where a few drops of blood from a finger prick could be rapidly tested in parallel for the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 with a test turnaround time of only 2-4 h. To evaluate our imaging device, we probed and imaged coronavirus microarrays with COVID-19-positive and negative sera and achieved a performance on par with a commercial microarray reader 100x more expensive than our imaging device. This work will enable large scale serosurveillance, which can play an important role in the months and years to come to implement efficient containment and mitigation measures, as well as help develop therapeutics and vaccines to treat and prevent the spread of COVID-19.Competing Interest StatementThe coronavirus antigen microarray is intellectual property of the Regents of the University of California that is licensed for commercialization to Nanommune Inc. (Irvine, CA), a private company for which Philip L. Felgner is the largest shareholder and several co-authors (de Assis, Jain, Nakajima, Jasinskas, and Khan) also own shares. Nanommune Inc. has a business partnership with Sino Biological Inc. (Beijing, China) which expressed and purified the antigens used in this study. Weian Zhao is the founder of Velox Biosystems Inc. (Irvine, CA) that develops diagnostics including for COVID-19. ER -