The vision of point-of-care PCR tests for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Hanliang Zhu; Haoqing Zhang; Sheng Ni; Marie Korabečná; Levent Yobas; Pavel Neuzil

doi:10.1016/j.trac.2020.115984

The vision of point-of-care PCR tests for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Trends Analyt Chem. 2020 Sep:130:115984. doi: 10.1016/j.trac.2020.115984. Epub 2020 Jul 20.

Authors

Hanliang Zhu¹, Haoqing Zhang¹, Sheng Ni², Marie Korabečná³, Levent Yobas², Pavel Neuzil^{1

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Affiliations

¹ Department of Microsystem Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 127 West Youyi Road, Xi'an, 710072 Shaanxi, PR China.
² Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, S.A.R., PR China.
³ Institute of Biology and Medical Genetics, 1 Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General University Hospital in Prague, Albertov 4, Prague 2, Czech Republic.
⁴ CEITEC Brno University of Technology, Purkyňova 123, 612 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
⁵ Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communications, Brno University of Technology, Technická 3058/10, 616 00 Brno, Czech Republic.

Abstract

Infectious diseases, such as the most recent case of coronavirus disease 2019, have brought the prospect of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tests into the spotlight. A rapid, accurate, low-cost, and easy-to-use test in the field could stop epidemics before they develop into full-blown pandemics. Unfortunately, despite all the advances, it still does not exist. Here, we critically review the limited number of prototypes demonstrated to date that is based on a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and has come close to fulfill this vision. We summarize the requirements for the POC-PCR tests and then go on to discuss the PCR product-detection methods, the integration of their functional components, the potential applications, and other practical issues related to the implementation of lab-on-a-chip technologies. We conclude our review with a discussion of the latest findings on nucleic acid-based diagnosis.

Keywords: COVID-19 diagnoses; Future of PCR; Microfluidics; Miniaturization; Point of care; Polymerase chain reaction.

Publication types

Review