Dr Anto John PhD
Research Fellow
Dr Anto John is a Research Fellow at the School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton. He was involved in the development of Lateral Flow Diagnostic devices in a multi-disciplinary team at the Zepler Institute, University of Southampton during his Post-doctoral fellowship.
Anto’s background includes PhD in Medical Microbiology (St. John's Research Institute / Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, India (SJRI)), and MSc in Microbiology from University of Bangalore.
As a Research Scientist in the Infectious Diseases Unit (SJRI), Anto was actively involved in biomarker studies and developed a keen interest in affordable diagnostic solutions. He has extensive experience of working in the field of infectious diseases with one of the important focus being the evaluation and use of the conventional laboratory methods in the diagnosis of MDR -TB, and XDR -TB and their implications for use in resource-limited settings, in the Southern parts of India.
For the past two years, Anto has been at the forefront of developing a smart polymer-based immuno-lateral flow assay. Its basic principle being, identification of antigen in biological samples with the help of detection antibodies labelled with varying sizes of gold nanoparticles or latex beads. Further, using optically controlled flow of sample and reagents, the smart polymer-based assay aimed at detecting CRP proteins, urinary tract infections and other biochemical reagents.
Most recently, with a view to contribute to the pertinent and urgent necessity of a quick and easy-to-use COVID-19 diagnostic test, Anto, along with his team contributed in successfully developing an antigen-based lateral-flow test. For samples with higher viral load, the test produced colour-change in less than 15 mins.
Aimed at utilising the available infrastructure at best while reducing reagent quantities, Anto has also been successful in developing an assay for COVID-19 detection test using Capillary-based platform, as a cost-effective and an efficient alternative to conventional RT-LAMP PCR methods. It has shown comparable sensitivity in lab-settings.