A concise discussion on the potential spectral tools for the rapid COVID-19 detection

Abstract

Developing robust methods to detect the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), a causative agent for the current global health pandemic, is an exciting area of research. Nevertheless, the currently used conventional reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique in COVID-19 detection endures with some inevitable limitations. Consequently, the establishment of rapid diagnostic tools and quick isolation of infected patients is highly essential. Furthermore, the requirement of point-of-care testing is the need of the hour. Considering this, we have provided a brief review of the use of very recently reported robust spectral tools for rapid COVID-19 detection. The spectral tools include, colorimetric reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS), with the admittance of principal component analysis (PCA) and machine learning (ML) for meeting the high-throughput and fool-proof platforms for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, are reviewed. Recently, these techniques have been readily applied to screen a large number of suspected patients within a short period and they demonstrated higher sensitivity for the detection of COVID-19 patients from unaffected human subjects.

Keywords: COVID-19; MALDI-MS; Machine learning; RT-LAMP; RT-PCR; SARS-CoV-2.

Fig. 1

Nasal swabs were used to acquire MALDI-MS spectra. The obtained data were subjected to PCA and ML techniques. Figure adapted and redrawn from Ref. .

Fig. 2

Workflow of RT-LAMP process in the detection of SARS-CoV-2.