Loading

Research Article Open Access
Volume 1 | Issue 2 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.33696/AIDS.1.010

Development of an Ultrasensitive HIV-1 DNA Detection Assay Based on an Automated πCode End-Point PCR System

  • 1NSW State Reference laboratory for HIV, St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, Darlinghurst, NSW, Australia
  • 2PlexBio Co., Ltd. Taipei City, Taiwan
  • 3Research Center for Asian Infectious Diseases, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
  • 4New Business Planning Department, Denka Seiken Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan
  • 5Stats Central, University of New South Wales, Australia
+ Affiliations - Affiliations

Corresponding Author

 Kazuo Suzuki, k.suzuki@amr.org.au

Received Date: October 02, 2019

Accepted Date: October 26, 2019

Abstract

Peripheral blood samples from patients diagnosed as HIV-1 positive and treated with anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for prolonged periods of time can present difficulties in current quantitative HIV-1 DNA detection, based on PCR assays. The current gold standard platform for HIV-1 DNA detection is real-time PCR, but its sensitivity is not always enough to detect extremely low levels of HIV- 1 DNA in some patients. We have developed a novel end-point PCR assay based on precision image pi-code (pCode) MicroDiscs detection platform. The newly developed “pCode assay” showed 100% sensitivity, while the real-time PCR assay showed 92.3%, in a head-to-head comparison using blood samples from 39 HIV-1 infected clinic patients, with a stable fully suppressed plasma viral-load (<20 copies/mL) for more than 2 years. Further analysis revealed a detection sensitivity over 27 times higher for the “pCode assay” compared to real-time PCR. The pCode assay is very specific and reproducible, with less than 20% Coefficient of Variation (CV) in detection, ranging from 40 to 4000 HIV-1 DNA copies per one million white blood cells. The pCode assay may have a great potential to be a standard assay platform in the future for the HIV diagnostic field, focusing on HIV cure trials.

Keywords

IV-1 DNA detection, Real-time PCR, End-point PCR

Author Information X