A 10th grader from Vancouver who developed an HIV test will be on her way to Ottawa to join an international competition of young scientists worldwide.
Nicole Ticea from Simon Fraser University created an HIV infection test which can show positive or negative results almost immediately.
Ticea submitted a school project that develops a point-of-care HIV diagnosis test which is almost as straightforward as a pregnancy test. It landed her to a first place award in the B.C. Regional Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge, moving her further to the SBCC (Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada) at the headquarters of National Research Council in Ottawa. The competition will be held on May 22.
Ticea's project went through laboratory tests that proved a new HIV test which can be done out of the laboratory with just a drop of blood. If the test is proven to be as simple out of the laboratory as it proved to be inside, it could be great news especially for locations that struggle against the disease. The HIV test is capable of analyzing a small amount of blood on a lab chip with the use of Isothermic Nucleic Acid Amplification. It appears to be as easy as pregnancy tests.
Gursev Anmole, an SFY graduate student who helped Ticea create the HIV test since October 2013 said her work made him realize how a fast and easy-to-administer test for an early stage of HIV infection could make a huge difference in prolonging or even saving thousands of lives in low income countries.
"I hope it gets completed so it can be used in places such as Africa, for example, where the facilities aren't available in remote regions where you take this test, and take it into the field essentially, and there you can do the testing," Anmole said.
Anmole is currently studying molecular biology. According to him, in determining whether or not a person is infected with HIV, each second counts. He said the speed of this new HIV test is a crucial element of the project.
Ticea has a passion for health sciences and she dreams of improving people's lives through her discoveries. Her SBCC entry, "Isothermic Nucleic Acid Amplification System for Point-of-Care HIV Diagnosis," is considered a worthy regional entry for the competition review committee.
