OpenCell partners with King’s College and Opentrons to create affordable shipping container COVID-19 testing lab

This is the first fully functional lab that can be immediately deployed anywhere in the world for COVID testing. The system uses low-cost liquid handling robots developed by Opentrons Labworks to perform a qPCR (the gold-standard nucleic acid detection test) to detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

This system design is open-source and the test relies on reagents and consumables that are not single-source or proprietary. This means it is free from the supply chain restrictions faced by many COVID-19 testing labs that all require reagents from the same few suppliers. Given Opentrons ability to rapidly deploy lab automation, and the shipping container form factor of this testing lab, this system is ready to be sent wherever automated testing bandwidth is needed.

The team has just been awarded an Innovate UK grant for business-led innovation in response to global disruption to accelerate the translation of their work from one proof-of-concept mobile-lab to many labs running much needed tests. OpenCell CEO Helene Steiner says, “This work is a vital step to increasing the number of accredited labs capable of performing COVID testing. Through Innovate UK support as well as an incredible team, we are working closely with regulators to ensure our testing lab system remains capable of high quality, low cost and meets the rigorous standards required to perform population testing.”

The validation data and open-source protocols will appear on BioRxiv, a popular preprint research database that has been used extensively to share COVID-19 testing information as it develops.