Active Enrichment of Nanoparticles for Ultra-Trace Point-of-Care COVID-19 Detection

Anal Chem. 2023 Mar 28;95(12):5316-5322. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.2c05381. Epub 2023 Mar 14.

Abstract

Active enrichment can detect nucleic acid at ultra-low concentrations without relatively time-consuming polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is an important development direction for future rapid nucleic acid detection. Here, we reported an integrated active enrichment platform for direct hand-held detection of nucleic acid of COVID-19 in nanoliter samples without PCR. The platform consists of a capillary-assisted liquid-carrying system for sampling, integrated circuit system for ultrasound output, and cell-phone-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) system. Considering the acoustic responsiveness and SERS-enhanced performance, gold nanorods were selected for biomedical applications. Functionalized gold nanorods can effectively capture and enrich biomarkers under ultrasonic aggregation. Such approaches can actively assemble gold nanorods in 1-2 s and achieved highly sensitive (6.15 × 10-13 M) SERS detection of COVID-19 biomarkers in nanoliter (10-7 L) samples within 5 min. We further demonstrated the high stability, repeatability, and selectivity of the platform, and validated its potential for the detection of throat swab samples. This simple, portable, and ultra-trace integrated active enrichment detection platform is a promising diagnostic tool for the direct and rapid detection of COVID-19.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19* / diagnosis
  • Gold
  • Humans
  • Metal Nanoparticles*
  • Nucleic Acids*
  • Point-of-Care Systems
  • Spectrum Analysis, Raman

Substances

  • Nucleic Acids
  • Gold