Shuqi Wang

    Dr. Shuqi Wang holds a PhD from Cambridge University. He received his medical degree from Bangbu Medical College, China, and his master degree from Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS).

       Dr. Wang's research focuses on developing and assessing internal controls for HIV-1 nucleic acid-based tests in resource-limited settings. Currently, HIV-1 antiretroviral treatment is rapidly expanding in sub-Saharan countries without viralload monitoring, resulting in the accumulation of drug-resistant strains and thus causes treatment failure. To this end, the Diagnostic Development Unit (DDU at University Cambridge) group developed a rapid nucleic acid sequence based amplification (NASBA). To exclude false-negative results, competitive, semi-competitive and non-competitive internal controls were constructed and evaluated in this assay for maximal performance. This work involved various molecular technologies including site-mutagenesis, cloning, in vitro transcriptions NASBA, nucleic acid-based dipstick detection, RT-PCR.

        With the expertise in microfluidics at BAMM lab, He plans to continue developing a POC viral load assay for resource-limited settings. Currently, the group is integrating a microfluidic device and a CCD camera to deliver a portable POC viral load system, which can provide viral load information in 30 minutes with minimum technical training. This POC system relies on the use of a unique quantification marker, HIV-1 viral particles in whole blood rather than RNA or reverse transcriptase activity, the latter of which is commonly used for HIV-1 quantification. However, these quantification markers will increase sample-to-result time and cost. Thus, the unique quantification marker in combination with nanoscale technologies enables the group to provide the state-of-the-art POC platform to address global health care issues.