Rapid and low-cost diagnostics of sickle-cell disease using the coffee-ring effect – SCDiag

Sickle cell disease (SCD), a highly frequent and widely spread genetic disease, is a strongly disabling to lethal blood pathology due to pathogenic hemoglobin mutations. Its impact on public health is dramatic, particularly in developing countries where current testing technologies are too costly to be accessible for most of the population. Here, we propose to join the expertise of physical chemists, biologists and medical doctors to develop a new and low-cost concept of SCD diagnostics based on the so-called “coffee-ring effect”. Visual analysis of the pattern left by an evaporating drop containing patient blood and particles will allow us to detect SCD-related hemoglobin mutations, including in newborns where fetal hemoglobin is predominant. This original strategy is expected to demonstrate, at the term of this project, the principle of a fast and ultralow-cost diagnostics combining extreme simplicity, exceptional robustness, and environmental adaptability.