Compared to its diagnostic predecessors, LUCAS creates 500-fold stronger and eight-fold longer-lasting bioluminescence signals, overcoming longstanding challenges faced by point-of-care diagnostics. Their study was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Developing effective diagnostics is incredibly challenging, especially when you think about the size of infectious disease particles and the complicated biological fluids we’re attempting to identify them in. Finding an HIV particle in a human blood sample is like finding an ice cube in a jelly-filled Olympic swimming pool while blindfolded,” said senior author Hadi Shafiee, Ph.D., a faculty member in the Division of Engineering in Medicine and Renal Division of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“With its novel enzyme cascade approach, LUCAS marks a substantial leap forward for sensing viruses in these complex biological samples.”