UNC Chapel Hill Researchers Design Rapid Test That Targets COVID-19’s Sweet Tooth
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of California San Diego take advantage of the virus’ sweet tooth in the design of a sugar-coated COVID-19 test strip that’s been effective at detecting all known variants of the coronavirus, including delta. “We have turned the tables on the virus by using the same sugar coat it binds to infect cells – to capture it into our sensor,” said Ronit Freeman, a UNC-Chapel Hill associate professor of biomedical engineering and applied physical sciences, who published the findings in ACS Central Science.