Electrochemical Biosensors for Early Stage Zika Diagnostics

Abstract

Health agencies have declared the recent Zika virus (ZIKV) infection an epidemic and a public health emergency of global concern due to its association with microcephaly and serious neurological disorders. The unavailability of effective drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic tools increases the demand for efficient analytical devices to detect ZIKV infection. However, high costs, longer diagnostic times, and stringent expertise requirements limit the utility of reverse transcriptase-PCR methods for rapid diagnostics. Therefore, developing portable, sensitive, selective, and cost-effective sensing systems to detect ZIKV at picomolar concentrations in biofluids would be a breakthrough in diagnostics and therapeutics. This paper highlights the advancements in developing smart sensing strategies to monitor ZIKV progression, with rapid point-of-care diagnostics as the ultimate aim.

Keywords: Zika virus infection; electrochemical biosensor; point-of-care sensing systems.

Figure 1. Workflow of a Paper-Based ZIKV Biosensor Based on CRISPR Technology

A) Proposed workflow for a CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) - associated protein-9 nuclease (CRISPR-Cas9) based engineered paper sensor to detect the ZIKV RNA genome, B) illustration of zika/dengue virus sensing according to work flow. Figure adapted with permission from [32].

Figure 2. Instrument Free Detection of ZIKV

A microfluidic chip was developed and integrated into a miniaturized system to detect ZIKV based on the RT-LAMP method. Figure reprinted with permission from [34].

Figure 3. Key Figure. Nano-enabled Electrochemical ZIKV Immunosensor

An interdigitated micro-electrode can be modified with various nanostructures for high loading of ZIKV-specific antibodies to detect ZIKV proteins at pM concentrations using an appropriate electrochemical transduction technique.