Rapid diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 using potential point-of-care electrochemical immunosensor: Toward the future prospects

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an emerging and highly infectious disease making global public health concern and socio-economic burden. It is caused due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). It has the tendency to spread rapidly through person-to-person. Currently, several molecular diagnostic platforms such as PCR, qRT-PCR, reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP), CRISPR are utilized for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2. These conventional techniques are costly, time consuming and require sophisticated instrumentation facility with well trained personnel for testing. Hence, it is tough to provide testing en-masse to the people in developing countries. On the other hand, several serological biosensors such as lateral flow immunosensor, optical, electrochemical, microfluidics integrated electrochemical/fluorescence is currently utilized for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2. In current pandemic situation, there is an urgent need of rapid and efficient diagnosis on mass scale of SARS-CoV-2 for early stage detection. Early monitoring of viral infections can help to control and prevent the spreading of infections in large chunk of population. In this review, the SARS-CoV-2 and their biomarkers in biological samples, collection of samples and recently reported potential electrochemical immunosensors for the rapid diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 are discussed.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• diagnosis
• electrochemical
• immunosensor
• SARS-CoV-2
• serological

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Dr. Avanish Kumar Srivastava, Director, CSIR-AMPRI Bhopal, India for his interest and encouragement in this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Pushpesh Ranjan is thankful to Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India for the award of SRF. Shalu Yadav is thankful to CSIR, India for the award of JRF. Neeraj Kumar is thankful to UGC, India for the award of SRF. Raju Khan would like to acknowledge SERB-IRPHA for providing funds in the form of IPA/2020/000130 project.