Clinically practiced and commercially viable nanobio engineered analytical methods for COVID-19 diagnosis

Abstract

The recent outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has left the world clueless. As the WHO declares this new contagion as a pandemic on the 11^th of March 2020, the alarming rate of the spawn of the disease in such a short period has disarranged the globe. Standing against this situation researchers are strenuously searching for the key traits responsible for this pandemic. As knowledge regarding the dynamics and host-path interaction of COVID-19 causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is currently unknown, the formulation of strategies concerning antiviral treatment, vaccination, and epidemiological control stands crucial. Before designing adequate therapeutic strategies, it is extremely essential to diagnose the disease at the outset as early detection can have a greater impact on building health system capacity. Hence, a comprehensive review of strategies for COVID-19 diagnosis is essential in this existing global situation. In this review, sequentially, we have provided the clinical details along with genetic and proteomic biomarkers related to COVID-19. The article systematically enlightens a clear overview of the clinically adopted techniques for the detection of COVID-19 including oligonucleotide-based molecular detection, Point-of-Care immunodiagnostics, radiographical analysis/sensing system, and newly developed biosensing prototypes having commercial viability. The commercial kits/analytical methods based-sensing strategies have also been tabulated categorically. The critical insights on the developer, commercial brand name, detection methods, technical operational details, detection time, clinical specimen, status, the limit of detection/detection ability have been discussed comprehensively. We believe that this review may provide scientists, clinicians and healthcare manufacturers valuable information regarding the most recent developments/approaches towards COVID-19 diagnosis.

Keywords: COVID-19; Clinical diagnosis; Immunoassay; Point of care; RT-PCR; SARS-CoV-2; Serological tests.

Fig. 1

Schematic representation of SARS-CoV-2 infection eventuated to COVID-19 disease; revealing symptoms, along with clinical sampling and available diagnosis methods.

Fig. 2

The impact of the rapid detection of infectious diseases in controlling and preventing an outbreak: (A) Impact of delayed diagnosis decreases the opportunity of controlling diseases; (B) the impact of early diagnosis increases the chances of disease prevention. (reproduced with permission from (Nguyen et al., 2020)).

Fig. 3

Standard operating procedure of SARS-CoV-2 immunodiagnostics kit, (A) The qualitative detection of IgM or IgG antibodies in human serum, whole blood, or finger prick samples (RayBiotech Life, Georgia); (B) The qualitative detection procedure of viral antigen from nasopharyngeal swab sample (reproduced with permission from Mertens et al., 2020).

Fig. 4

Schematic representation of the newly developed biosensor prototypes (A) The dual-functional plasmonic biosensor combining the plasmonic photothermal effect and localized surface plasmon resonance sensing transduction for the clinical COVID-19 diagnosis (reproduced with permission from Qiu et al., 2020a, Qiu et al., 2020b); (B) COVID-19 FET sensor operation technique, where graphene is selected as a sensing material, and SARS-CoV-2 spike antibody is conjugated onto the graphene sheet via an interfacing molecule as a probe linker (reproduced with permission from Seo et al., 2020).

Fig. 5

The critical role of epidemiological surveillance, diagnosis, therapeutic monitoring in various stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection-causing COVID-19.