ELECTROMED project joins the fight against COVID-19

ELECTROMED is a Pathfinder Open project developing an innovative technology able to detect the interaction between immune receptors and short peptides in a fast, flexible and inexpensive peptide microarray platform.

The project will build and validate a proof-of-concept prototype by integrating electrochemical synthesis of peptide bio receptors with sensitive Field Effect Transistors (FETs) in order to enable programmable in situ protein detection.

The sensing technology developed by the project holds a strong potential to fight COVID 19 by detecting if a person has acquired immunity using short peptide targets (epitopes) for SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies. By introducing small changes in chemistry, ELECTROMED technology can also be used for direct detection of viral RNA. These techniques could help with the current shortage of tests due to the deficit of fundamental reagents, mainly enzymes and antibodies.

The project is very committed in contributing to fight COVID-19 and each participant is also strongly involved in other initiatives related to the virus. For example, in addition to the study of label-free detection of COVID-19 specific (genetic and proteomic) biomarkers to improve testing capabilities, some partners of the consortium are also involved in the investigation of the cellular responses of T cells to proteomic viral cues capable of triggering the development of long-lasting vaccines.

The ELECTROMED consortium will publish all their findings on the COVID-19 data portal and the EU Horizon results platform. The consortium prospects to finish the first related experiments and provide preliminary results within the next half year.