Detection of organ infections under COVID-19 (VIROTEC)

In the VIROTEC project, the team from Hahn-Schickard, Therawis Diagnostics GmbH, Rodinger Kunststoff-Technik GmbH and the institute for immunology of the TU Munich are planning to research a fully automated lateral flow test system for analysing organ-specific virosomes at the point of care.

In patients with Covid-19, the spread of the infection to organs such as the lungs, liver, kidneys or heart can lead to sometimes irreparable organ damage. There is therefore an urgent need to test which organs are particularly affected during an infection in order to be able to initiate organ-specific therapies. All cells continuously release small, organ- or cell type-specific extracellular vesicles. After infection of a cell by SARS-CoV-2, virosomes carrying viral antigens are released. By detecting cell type-specific markers on virosomes, it is possible to identify infected organs. Normally, flow cytometry is used for this purpose, but it is not suitable for routine diagnostics due to the high personnel requirements and complex data analysis. The aim of the VIROTEC project is to research a fully automated lateral flow test system for analysing organ-specific virosomes at the point of care. This new type of diagnostics is of great importance not only for SARS-CoV-2, but also for infections with viruses such as influenza, hepatitis B and C, dengue virus and West Nile virus.