Development of nucleic acid aptamer-based lateral flow assays: A robust platform for cost-effective point-of-care diagnosis

Abstract

Lateral flow assay (LFA) has made a paradigm shift in the in vitro diagnosis field due to its rapid turnaround time, ease of operation and exceptional affordability. Currently used LFAs predominantly use antibodies. However, the high inter-batch variations, error margin and storage requirements of the conventional antibody-based LFAs significantly impede its applications. The recent progress in aptamer technology provides an opportunity to combine the potential of aptamer and LFA towards building a promising platform for highly efficient point-of-care device development. Over the past decades, different forms of aptamer-based LFAs have been introduced for broad applications ranging from disease diagnosis, agricultural industry to environmental sciences, especially for the detection of antibody-inaccessible small molecules such as toxins and heavy metals. But commercial aptamer-based LFAs are still not used widely compared with antibodies. In this work, by analysing the key issues of aptamer-based LFA design, including immobilization strategies, signalling methods, and target capturing approaches, we provide a comprehensive overview about aptamer-based LFA design strategies to facilitate researchers to develop optimised aptamer-based LFAs.

A Universal DNA Aptamer that Recognizes Spike Proteins of Diverse SARS‐CoV‐2 Variants of Concern

“…In addition, they have been shown to be capable of detecting targets present in clinical samples [11–13] . These attractive properties make aptamers important MREs for assay and diagnostic development [14–17] …”

A Nanoparticle-Based Biosensor Combined With Multiple Cross Displacement Amplification for the Rapid and Visual Diagnosis of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Clinical Application

“…In this study, a gold nanoparticle-based LFB was used to detect N. gonorrhoeae -MCDA orf1 amplicons. This paper-based platform is widely used in clinical settings due to its high selectivity, low LoD, low sample volume, low cost, robustness, rapidity, and user-friendly format ( Quesada-González and Merkoçi, 2015 ; Koczula and Gallotta, 2016 ; Urusov et al, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2021 ). The LFB rapidly and visually detected N. gonorrhoeae -MCDA products for labeling with BSA-biotin and anti-FAM on LFB strips.…”

Oligonucleotide aptamers for pathogen detection and infectious disease control

“…Further, in ALFA, both capture molecules and the membrane-immobilized sensor at the test line can be antibodies, aptamers, complementary ssDNA probes, split aptamers, or conjugates, such as biotin or streptavidin 16 , 17 , 19 . More promising and referential designs of ALFA were systematically introduced in the special topic review for nucleic acid aptamer-based lateral flow assays 20 .…”