Sixth Wave Innovations (SIXW.C) announced they have successfully demonstrated their colorimetric detection of coronavirus using their patent-pending Accelerated Molecular Imprinted Polymers (AMIPs) technology.
Colorimetric detection is a detection method that identifies the presence of a target by means of a colour regent. Basically, it allows you to identify a substance by observing a change in colour.
On the left, the AMIPs technology has been exposed to coronavirus, on the right a non-coronavirus sample.
This demonstration comes after they released their proof of concept last month.
Sixth Wave’s technology is noteworthy because it doesn’t require a Ph.D. in biology to https://e4njohordzs.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/tnw8sVO3j-2.pngister, all it really takes is us to be able to recognise colours, something most of us learned in kindergarten.
“Colorimetric detection is an important development for AMIPs™ technology,” commented Dr. Jon Gluckman, President and CEO of Sixth Wave. “As previously disclosed, the AMIPs™ polymer captures the COVID-19 virus, as intended, and is now supported by three independent analytical methods. Two primary objectives of any rapid diagnostic tool are definitive results and ease of interpretation. Colorimetric Sensors can deliver on both fronts and this is a material step in that direction.”
Sixth Wave says they intend on building on this technology and hope to use AMIPs to rapidly detect a wide range of viruses.
When President Trump tweeted out that sometimes there are over 100,000 flu deaths in a year, people were quick to correct him that the highest death toll for a recent flu season was 61,000. I remember thinking at the time “that’s still a lot!”. So even as we look to put the COVID-19 pandemic behind us (I say, still in lockdown) it’s worth thinking optimistically about any innovations from the past year that could be used for our regularly recurring viruses.
Sixth Wave also claims the AMIPs is designed to be effective on the emerging variants of the coronavirus.
“As previously disclosed, AMIPs™ are designed to be resistant to loss in efficacy due to virus mutation and emergence of variants which may change the specific antibody/antigen reaction but have yet to create gross changes to the size and shape of the Virus. AMIPs™ also has the potential to identify multiple types of viruses (coronavirus, influenza virus, rhinovirus etc.) in a single platform,” said Garrett Kraft, Sixth Wave’s Lead AMIPs™ researcher. “The confirmation of colorimetric detection from this test opens the possibility of deploying a palette of colors to identify multiple viruses in a single pass such as influenza AND COVID-19 with different colors for each. This potential for independent color coding is perhaps the most promising aspect of AMIPs™ as a versatile diagnostic tool. Ideally, our end AMIPs™ product will be a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of sorts, performing multiple diagnostic tests in a single application.”
Following the news, Sixth Wave’s share price rose two and a half cents to $0.46.
Full disclosure: Sixth Wave is an Equity Guru marketing client.
