Rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2: The gradual boom of lateral flow immunoassay

Abstract

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is still in an epidemic situation, which poses a serious threat to the safety of people and property. Rapid diagnosis and isolation of infected individuals are one of the important methods to control virus transmission. Existing lateral flow immunoassay techniques have the advantages of rapid, sensitive, and easy operation, and some new options have emerged with the continuous development of nanotechnology. Such as lateral flow immunoassay test strips based on colorimetric-fluorescent dual-mode and gold nanoparticles, Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering, etc., these technologies have played an important role in the rapid diagnosis of COVID-19. In this paper, we summarize the current research progress of lateral flow immunoassay in the field of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 infection diagnosis, analyze the performance of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 lateral flow immunoassay products, review the advantages and limitations of different detection methods and markers, and then explore the competitive CRISPR-based nucleic acid chromatography detection method. This method combines the advantages of gene editing and lateral flow immunoassay and can achieve rapid and highly sensitive lateral flow immunoassay detection of target nucleic acids, which is expected to be the most representative method for community and clinical point-of-care testing. We hope that researchers will be inspired by this review and strive to solve the problems in the design of highly sensitive targets, the selection of detection methods, and the enhancement of CRISPR technology, to truly achieve rapid, sensitive, convenient, and specific detection of novel coronaviruses, thus promoting the development of novel coronavirus diagnosis and contributing our modest contribution to the world’s fight against epidemics.

Advancements in the synergy of isothermal amplification and CRISPR-cas technologies for pathogen detection

“…Some researchers have employed the CRISPR-Cas12-based DETECTR assay for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 ( Broughton et al, 2020 ), The development of DETECTR’s single-tube assay platform has enabled the rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 in approximately 50 min ( Sun et al, 2021 ). The combination of CRISPR technology with isothermal nucleic acid amplification, followed by visualization using lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA), has also found applications in SARS-CoV-2 detection ( He et al, 2022 ). Taking Figure 3 as an example, we summarize the clinical applications of the SHERLOCK technology during the COVID-19 and found that the SHERLOCK technology made a great contribution to the detection of outbreaks.…”

A semi-quantitative visual lateral flow immunoassay for SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection for the follow-up of immune response to vaccination or recovery

“…LFIA devices are portable, low cost and easy to use and these are the reasons for their massive employment in the last few decades and for the crucial role played during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. [21][22][23][24] A typical LFIA device is a portable cassette including a strip composed of overlayered materials, which contains all the reagents required for the test. The device allows for the detection of the target molecule by exploiting the affinity and specificity of the antibody-antigen interaction.…”

Lateral flow strip assay of a gene segment in the COVID-19 virus with combined dual readout mode and preliminary multisite hybrid chain reaction amplification

“…9 Compared with antigen detection of SARS-CoV-2, the most significant change of LFTS is that the detection performance has been improved by nucleic-acid-based SARS-CoV-22 detection. 10 Due to the relative scarcity of CoV-2 virions in readily sampled biological fluids, the procedure for nucleic acid detection methods normally includes amplification of the target genes before LFTS assays are used for visualization and qualitative or quantitative detection of pathogens, which is its key advantage over immunoassay. The PCR technique is the most widely used pathogenic microorganism detection method at present, and has high sensitivity and good accuracy.…”