Projects / Programmes
Portable, highly sensitive and selective nanostructured biosensors for viral rapid detection
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 2.09.00 |
Engineering sciences and technologies |
Electronic components and technologies |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 2.05 |
Engineering and Technology |
Materials engineering |
electrochemical biosensors, sensor system, electronic components, nanostructured materials, screen-printed electrodes, virus, SARS-CoV-2
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
April 19, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
Data for ARIS tenders (
04.04.2019 – Programme tender,
archive
)
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
10 |
170 |
158 |
15.8 |
| Scopus |
9 |
178 |
168 |
18.67 |
Researchers (1)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
38204 |
PhD Špela Trafela |
Materials science and technology |
Head |
2021 - 2024 |
73 |
Organisations (1)
| no. |
Code |
Research organisation |
City |
Registration number |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
0106 |
Jožef Stefan Institute |
Ljubljana |
5051606000 |
90,682 |
Abstract
Infectious diseases continue to cause an enormous burden of death and disability in developing countries, and there is an urgent need to better understand the infectious pathogens and develop ways to control their spread. Increasing access to reliable testing for infectious diseases could have a major impact on disease burden and can help prevent the spread and allow scientific, life-saving decisions on treatment and isolation of patients that are especially effective in the early stages of spread. We propose a new type of testing strategy based on electrochemical biosensing aspects, created using a microfluidic detection platform for rapid, sensitive, and specific detection of infectious SARS-CoV-2 and its variants with multiple S-glycoprotein mutations in saliva. The target compounds, i.e., SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, were selected due to the current worldwide outbreak, however, the proposed electrochemical biosensing aspect may be expanded to future emerging pathogens by undemanding modifications. A novel design optimization strategy is suggested to enhance the analytical performance (e.g., sensitivity, selectivity, etc.) of the proposed microfluidic biosensor platform by taking into consideration the constructional and experimental parameters. The biosensor platform is based on nanostructured polystyrene (PS)/polyaniline (PANI)-Au NP composite-modified inexpensive commercial screen-printed-electrodes (SPEs). The surface of modified-SPEs is later immobilized using two different representative receptor elements, antibodies (Ab) and/or angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which are both specific to viral SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein, that we target. Tackling PS/PANI-Au NPs composite on the nanoscale enables to exploit its outstanding conductivity, biocompatibility, and high specific surface area which facilitate loading/immobilization of a huge amount of viral receptor elements (Ab/ACE2), thus resulting in high sensitivity, specificity, and low detection limits (i.e., at attomolar or subattomolar concentration levels). Such a construction is able to translate this specific covalent interaction (Ab/ACE2 with its corresponding binding viral target, i.e., receptor-binding domain (RBD) of spike (S) glycoprotein) into a measurable, concentration-dependent electrical signal by real-time monitoring the electrochemical response in the presence of a [Fe(CN)6]3-/4- redox probe. By creating an electrochemical readout, data enable qualitative and quantitative analysis. A practical advantage of the proposed development can have future implications in translating to low-cost design assays. The proposed SARS-CoV-2 detection-based on SPE-PS/PANI-Au NPs-Ab/ACE2 is integrated into a microfluidic cell, forming a so-called microfluidic detection platform which will be further connected to miniaturized assembled electronics with wireless (WiFi) communication support via SPE’s three-terminal electrode connector to test its potential use as a proof-of-concept biosensor. The proposed design represents a low-cost and efficient alternative to conventional assays for testing as offers a simple in-situ method of analysis in much shorter time frames. Its feasible design is easy-to-use and can be operated by patients themselves using simple samples like saliva, thus allowing population-scale screening.
