ST PAUL, Minn. — Maplewood-based 3M is teaming up with researchers at MIT to develop a new rapid test that could diagnose COVID-19.
According to 3M, the project was selected by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) for accelerated development, after review by an expert panel.
The partnership is researching whether a simple diagnostic device can produce "highly accurate results within minutes." The goal would be to make a test that can be mass-manufactured.
The test that 3M and MIT are developing is paper-based, and could be administered at the point of care. It would not need to be sent to labs for testing.
“Our approach is ambitious, but our collective expertise can make a difference for people around the world, so we owe it to ourselves and society to give it our best effort,” 3M Chief Technology Officer John Banovetz said in a news release. “We are seeking to improve the speed, accessibility and affordability of testing for the virus, a major step in helping to prevent its spread.”
3M believes that if the test is validated, the manufacturing equipment used to make it could be scaled to produce millions per day.
“There is a pressing need for a highly scalable rapid test,” MIT Professor Hadley Sikes said in a statement. “We are working with our colleagues at 3M to overcome the challenges to move this research from lab to impact, and find an innovative path forward to manufacture it at scale."
The test is being financially supported by the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Tech (RADx Tech) program.
Right now, that program is supporting a four-week period of intense research to demonstrate whether the test works and can be commercialized on a large scale. If it can, the team would work with that NIH program to deploy it "as quickly as possible."