Coronavirus Diagnostic combined with seasonal Flu Sensing – CorDial-FLU

Worldwide, infections and death from SARS-CoV-2 continue despite lockdown and the use of masks. What started as a temporary sanitary issue, has morphed into a more permanent and long-lasting pan epidemic outbreak. One efficient manner to limit COVID-19 spreading and an adequate means of better managing the COVID-19 outbreak is through unrestrained availability of fast, efficient, accurate and cost-effective testing. We have recently developed CorDial-1, a Covid-19 electrochemical sensor screening the infection state of patients. While less infective than SARS-CoV-2, influenza is not only prone to occasional pandemics, but shows Covid-19 comparable symptoms such as fever, tiredness, and dry cough. Differentiation between both viral infections are not trivial. Here we propose CorDial-FLU, a novel and innovative solution to address this medical need through the development of nanobody based, portable and cost-effective viral diagnostic devices for influenza in parallel to SARS-CoV-2. To reach this goal, IEMN (UMR 8520, ULille, coordinator) brings in the surface functionalization and clinical tests methodology of the sensor chip. AFMB (UMR 7257, Aix Marseille Université) provides the consortium with their worldwide knowledge in nanobody (VHH) design targeting the nucleoprotein (NP), a highly conserved antigenic determinant for different influenza types as well as the spike proteins (S1 for Covid-19 and HA for influenza). The CHU-Lille directly performs the clinical validation, thanks to an already authorized clinical trial, to confirm at least equal sensitivity and specificity of CorDial-FLU for influenza virus detection in nasopharyngeal swabs and saliva, as compared with the PCR technique currently in use. The consortium will take advantage of an already authorized clinical trial (CorDial-1 ID RCB: 2020-A01147-32).
The impact will be a fast (10 min), highly sensitive (200 VPs/mL), specific and inexpensive (<15 Euros) and portable (< 1kg) diagnostic device that provides positive/negative answers of infection state with Covid-19 and/or influenza A on site. Fast screening will allow early therapy and monitoring of positively diagnosed patients, thus reducing suffering and saving lives.