How Nanophotonic Label-Free Biosensors Can Contribute to Rapid and Massive Diagnostics of Respiratory Virus Infections: COVID-19 Case

Abstract

The global sanitary crisis caused by the emergence of the respiratory virus SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 outbreak has revealed the urgent need for rapid, accurate, and affordable diagnostic tests to broadly and massively monitor the population in order to properly manage and control the spread of the pandemic. Current diagnostic techniques essentially rely on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which provide the required sensitivity and specificity. However, its relatively long time-to-result, including sample transport to a specialized laboratory, delays massive detection. Rapid lateral flow tests (both antigen and serological tests) are a remarkable alternative for rapid point-of-care diagnostics, but they exhibit critical limitations as they do not always achieve the required sensitivity for reliable diagnostics and surveillance. Next-generation diagnostic tools capable of overcoming all the above limitations are in demand, and optical biosensors are an excellent option to surpass such critical issues. Label-free nanophotonic biosensors offer high sensitivity and operational robustness with an enormous potential for integration in compact autonomous devices to be delivered out-of-the-lab at the point-of-care (POC). Taking the current COVID-19 pandemic as a critical case scenario, we provide an overview of the diagnostic techniques for respiratory viruses and analyze how nanophotonic biosensors can contribute to improving such diagnostics. We review the ongoing published work using this biosensor technology for intact virus detection, nucleic acid detection or serological tests, and the key factors for bringing nanophotonic POC biosensors to accurate and effective COVID-19 diagnosis on the short term.

Microfluidic devices for the detection of viruses: aspects of emergency fabrication during the COVID-19 pandemic and other outbreaks

“…DNA, RNA), such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). Another such category uses antibodies as biological ligands to bind target particles for the detection of viruses based on their viral proteins [ 79 , 145 , 149 ]. Besides, other innovative solutions to detecting viruses exploit fabrication capabilities of micro- and nanotechnology to detect viruses with fewer or even no biological ligands but rather based on their geometry or electrical properties.…”

Wearable Label‐Free Optical Biodetectors: Progress and Perspectives

“…An extensive review on these label‐free optical detectors and their applications toward the COVID‐19 has been published. [ 61 ] Advancements in sensing technologies will make these devices suitable for the rapid, accurate, and detect wide range of biomarkers. All of the aforementioned methods are reported widely because of their advantages such as simplicity, ease of use, flexibility, high accuracy, real‐time monitoring, and fast detection; however, they have disadvantages such as bulky size, requiring benchtop setup, high power consumption, and some of them are invasive in nature.…”

Optical technologies for the detection of viruses like COVID-19: Progress and prospects

“…Finally, our perspective on the current and future directions in the field of optical technologies for the detection of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 is also presented. Recently, in an interesting review, M. Soler et al discussed various label-free nanophotonics sensors for the detection of viruses like COVID-19 ( Soler et al, 2020a ). The researchers accounted mainly for genomic detection and intact virus detection primarily using surface plasmon resonance technique with a little discussion on silicon photonics sensor based detection but not accounted in detail about the spectroscopic signature-based detection of viruses.…”