Emerging point-of-care biosensors for rapid diagnosis of COVID-19: current progress, challenges, and future prospects

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is currently a serious global health threat. While conventional laboratory tests such as quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), serology tests, and chest computerized tomography (CT) scan allow diagnosis of COVID-19, these tests are time-consuming and laborious, and are limited in resource-limited settings or developing countries. Point-of-care (POC) biosensors such as chip-based and paper-based biosensors are typically rapid, portable, cost-effective, and user-friendly, which can be used for COVID-19 in remote settings. The escalating demand for rapid diagnosis of COVID-19 presents a strong need for a timely and comprehensive review on the POC biosensors for COVID-19 that meet ASSURED criteria: Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, Equipment-free, and Deliverable to end users. In the present review, we discuss the importance of rapid and early diagnosis of COVID-19 and pathogenesis of COVID-19 along with the key diagnostic biomarkers. We critically review the most recent advances in POC biosensors which show great promise for the detection of COVID-19 based on three main categories: chip-based biosensors, paper-based biosensors, and other biosensors. We subsequently discuss the key benefits of these biosensors and their use for the detection of antigen, antibody, and viral nucleic acids. The commercial POC biosensors for COVID-19 are critically compared. Finally, we discuss the key challenges and future perspectives of developing emerging POC biosensors for COVID-19. This review would be very useful for guiding strategies for developing and commercializing rapid POC tests to manage the spread of infections.

COVID-19 Biomarkers and Advanced Sensing Technologies for Point-of-Care (POC) Diagnosis

“…Another research group reported eCovSens, an antigenic COVID-19 sensor that detects the S1 protein on fluorine-doped tin oxide decorated with Au NPs or screen-printed carbon electrodes. A detection limit of 80 femtoMolar (fM) and 120 fM for the S1 protein on the FTO and SPCE, respectively, was achieved in saliva in 30 s [144][145][146][147].…”

Sequencing SARS-CoV-2 from Antigen Tests

“…The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted July 18, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.14.21260291 doi: medRxiv preprint friendly, Rapid and Robust, Equipment-free, Deliverable to end-users (ASSURED) diagnostic tool [20,21]. Thus, antigen testing has been a suitable tool for global monitoring of new SARS-CoV-2 cases.…”

“…In early 2021, the DoD began using antigen testing on asymptomatic active duty and DoD civilian personnel [18,19]. Antigen tests meet the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of an Affordable, Selective and Sensitive, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, Equipment-free, Deliverable to end-users (ASSURED) diagnostic tool [20,21]. Thus, antigen testing has been a suitable tool for global monitoring of new SARS-CoV-2 cases.…”

Lab-on-a-chip technologies for food safety, processing, and packaging applications: a review

“…In recent years, significant advancements have been carried out in the development of smartphone-based chips, paper-based microfluidics, and miniature environmental monitoring systems (Hong et al 2018 ; Marquez et al 2019 ; Puangbanlang et al 2019 ; Nelis et al 2020 ; Fernández-Abedul 2021 ). The portable diagnostic test kits have been explored extensively in the healthcare sector and with pandemics like COVID-19, the requirements for accurate sample handling and analysis become even more crucial globally (Yang et al 2018 ; Kim et al 2019 ; Bhalla et al 2020 ; Ghosh et al 2020 ; Rasmi et al 2021 ).…”