News: COVID-19 Biosensor

COVID-19, a novel virus that originated from Wuhan, China, has taken over the world by storm, affecting the economy stability and societal distribution. Nationwide governmental restrictions to control the spread of the disease have been imposed, which is one step closer to “flatten the curve”. However, due to limited polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and the expensive cost incurred from performing the test, it is hard to obtain the actual number of affected patients with the COVID19, especially in rural or remote areas^1,2. Here, we propose a highly sensitive biosensor for point-of-care rapid diagnosis. In the past, we have been successful to show effective biosensor for glucose biosensor. Here, our proposed biosensor only depends on simple photolithography steps.

The proposed biosensor structure had demonstrated high sensitivity detection to HIV human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) p24 proteins, with a sensitivity of 250 viruses/ml or 3 orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than commercial Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Moreover, this biosensor demonstrated the highest glucose sensitivity given its small size. For COVID-19, we aim to fabricate affordable biosensor using electronic ELISA method, which has been proven to be an effective detection method for nanoscale devices.

This innovative biosensor is expected to detect novel Corona virus at a high sensitivity than regular PCR tests. This affordable biosensor can be integrated with smartphones or any other mainstream technology for point-of-care rapid diagnosis. All these efforts should significantly improve current screening tests of COVID-19 and enhance our strategy in fighting this 2020 pandemic.