Development of a robust HIV-1 diagnostic system (HIV-eCaDI) for at-home testing: SUPPLEMENT

About This Grant

To develop the HIV-eCaDI device we are developing for our NIAID project R61 AI181052 “Development of a robust HIV-1 diagnostic system (HIV-eCaDI) for at-home testing” we prepare, quantify and validate HIV virions for testing as well as test that our HIV sample inactivation is effective to maintain biosafety during testing. We utilize a combination of chemiluminescent cellular cytopathology assessment for HIV-induced cell killing and absorbance-based ELISAs for p24 antigen quantification and are developing a fluorescence polarization assay for intact virion quantification. The 16-year-old Perkin-Elmer Victor X5 multimode platereader that we use heavily in our BSL-2 laboratory to perform each of these assays recently had a critical control board failure and replacement parts are no longer commercially available, which makes performance of these necessary HIV assessment assays impossible. The objective of this supplement is to correct this limitation by replacing our Victor X5 platereader with an equivalent modern Victor Nivo platereader so we can continue to quantify and validate high-quality HIV samples necessary for quantitative evaluation of the HIV-eCaDI devices.