TMek: A lab-on-chip diagnostic test for the malaria disease

The search for new rapid diagnostic tests is a priority in the fight against malaria, one of the most common life-threatening infectious diseases. In this paper, we present an easy to operate lab-on-chip platform that allows a pan-plasmodic, rapid and quantitative illness detection. This innovative system, named TMek, is based on the paramagnetic behavior of infected cells with respect to other blood components, thus allowing for a magnetophoretic separation in a high magnetic field gradient. The capability of our test to perform this selective detection has been tested by means of capture experiments on treated bovine red blood cells and suspensions of synthetic hemozoin crystals. Preliminary tests on patients with malaria were successfully done at the Sacco Hospital in Milano and the possibility to perform a follow up of the treatment has emerged. A study on the discrimination of the infection stages has been done on cultured red blood cells at Istituto Superiors di Sanita in Roma. In April 2019, a preclinical validation has been carried out at Hopital Saint Luc of Mbalmayo, in Cameroon, on 75 suspected malaria patients. Even though the number of samples was limited, this preliminary study indicates the on-field operability of TMek as a rapid diagnostic test for malaria.