Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) are developing a new viral biosensor test designed to detect Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV simultaneously. The project is supported by a $537,619 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The goal is to create an affordable, accurate, and easy-to-use diagnostic tool that provides immediate results, especially in resource-limited settings.
According to the World Health Organization, over 300 million people worldwide live with hepatitis B or C, and more than 40 million have HIV. Current diagnostic methods require blood tests analyzed in clinical laboratories, which can be difficult to access in remote areas and may take months for results. This delay can worsen patient outcomes and increase the risk of disease transmission.
UCF’s research team aims to repurpose an existing electrochemical biosensor to identify these viruses at the RNA level and quantify viral loads. This approach could allow healthcare providers to detect co-infections and tailor treatment plans more effectively.
“It’s very important to detect those viruses in the same sample because those viruses share the same route of transmission and it increases the chance that the same person may get multiple viruses,” said Yulia Gerasimova, associate professor of chemistry. “To know how to tailor the treatment for patients depending on if they have a co-infection or not.”
Daniel Ram, assistant professor of infectious disease at the College of Medicine, emphasized the global need for accessible diagnostics. “I think the goal is to have something that’s accessible worldwide — regardless of the environment,” he said. “Having the capacity to detect multiple viruses at once really has potential to benefit everyone.”
Ram also recalled his experience growing up in Guyana, where patient samples had to be shipped abroad for analysis, leading to delays and degraded samples. He explained, “In order to quantify viruses and patient samples, we would have to ship the samples out to Miami or sometimes Trinidad and Tobago. During shipping, those samples degraded and the possibility for failure is high. In the meantime, doctors didn’t know how to best treat the patients.”
Karin Chumbimuni-Torres, associate professor of chemistry and project lead, described how her previous work on biosensors for dengue fever and Zika virus laid the groundwork for this new test. She explained that their biosensor technology can detect any strain of HIV due to its ability to identify mutations.
“This is key,” Chumbimuni-Torres said. “HIV can mutate a lot so we made a technique that can detect any of the mutations.”
The researchers plan for their test to combine serum with a liquid sample applied directly onto the biosensor, quantifying viruses at the RNA level using isothermal amplification techniques.
“We’re using something called isothermal amplification to amplify viral nucleic acids for them to be detected with virus-specific probes,” Gerasimova explained. “This project is more or less exploratory and we’re developing and fine tuning our technique along the way.”
Ram added about their ongoing work: “We want to be test whether or not the sensors can detect certain amounts of virus and how that would relate to how that may manifest in patients. For this round of experimentation, we need to validate with cell cultures and having different quantified amounts of the viruses. Knowing how many viral particles it’s able to detect will allow us to move forward in assessing a patient cohort.”
As research continues, Ram sees significant potential: “This technology has immediate benefit if we can show it to work effectively in detecting multiple viruses,” he said.
The UCF team brings together expertise from chemistry and medicine departments. Chumbimuni-Torres specializes in chemical sensors for biological applications; Gerasimova leads research on nucleic acid diagnostics; Ram focuses on infection-related immune responses.
