Lab-on-foil based portable µPCR for POC nucleic acid testing of HIV-1

We present a low-cost mPCR platform using a thin film microheater on foil, fabricated in only one metallization step using roll-to-roll fabrication. The mPCR module was successfully applied for amplification of HIV-1 viral load in three clinical samples of which one was negative control. The mPCR module was able to amplify the target in the two HIV positive samples whereas the COBAS TaqMan HIV-1 from Roche and an in-house developed qPCR assay using TaqMan probes could not. These results indicate that the mPCR module has the potential to be very sensitive. The low cost mPCR system opens up for the possibility to perform molecular diagnostics at the POC - ideally suited at low-resource settings.