Abstract
With an everyday surge in the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases, it is still being debated in different parts of the world on how the tests per day have to be increased and available to everyone. This would help identifying the affected people at the earliest stages and treat the symptoms when they are benign. The standard laboratory diagnostic tests, such quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), although effective in the detection of virus, lack the ability to return test results quickly. Also, there is a mismatch between the number of samples collected per day to the number of samples that can be tested timely by the approved laboratories. This calls for alternate test kits that are rapid and can be used at the frontlines and elsewhere for point-of-care applications. In this talk, we will describe an electrochemical approach for detecting the pandemic 2019 Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), the Rapid 2019-novel Coronavirus Detection Sensor (RAnCODS-19). We have demonstrated the performance of our sensor with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in samples. Our results indicate a positive/negative response for the presence/absence of the protein within 100 milliseconds. In this talk, we will describe the sensor and present further results. Implementation of multiple of these sensors at the frontlines would make a difference in early detection of COVID-19 in patients. Our multidisciplinary team includes experts in electrochemistry, molecular virology and biomedical sciences.
Keywords:
COVID-19 detection; Electrochemical biosensor; Point-of-care diagnostic devices