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. 2022 Jul 3;12(7):487.
doi: 10.3390/bios12070487.

A Biosensor Platform for Point-of-Care SARS-CoV-2 Screening

Antonios Georgas  1 , Konstantinos Agiannis  1 , Vasiliki Papakosta  1 , Panagiotis Priftis  1 , Spyridon Angelopoulos  1 , Angelo Ferraro  1 , Evangelos Hristoforou  1
Affiliations

A Biosensor Platform for Point-of-Care SARS-CoV-2 Screening

Antonios Georgas et al. Biosensors (Basel). .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic remains a constant threat to human health, the economy, and social relations. Scientists around the world are constantly looking for new technological tools to deal with the pandemic. Such tools are the rapid virus detection tests, which are constantly evolving and optimizing. This paper presents a biosensor platform for the rapid detection of spike protein both in laboratory conditions and in swab samples from hospitalized patients. It is a continuation and improvement of our previous work and consists of a microcontroller-based readout circuit, which measures the capacitance change generated in an interdigitated electrode transducer by the presence either of sole spike protein or the presence of SARS-CoV-2 particles in swab samples. The circuit efficiency is calibrated by its correlation with the capacitance measurement of an LCR (inductance (L), capacitance (C), and resistance (R)) meter. The test result is made available in less than 2 min through the microcontroller's LCD (liquid-crystal display) screen, whereas at the same time, the collected data are sent wirelessly to a mobile application interface. The novelty of this research lies in the potential it offers for continuous and effective screening of SARS-CoV-2 patients, which is facilitated and enhanced, providing big data statistics of COVID-19 in terms of space and time. This device can be used by individuals for SARS-CoV-2 testing at home, by health professionals for patient monitoring, and by public health agencies for monitoring the spatio-temporal spread of the virus.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; interdigitated electrodes; internet of things; portable; readout; screening; smartphone; virus monitoring.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Working principle of the circuit.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mobile application’s homepage; (a) sign in page; (b) registration page.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The prototype PCB; (A) front side of the board: (a) Blue Pill STM32 development board; (b) HC-05 BT module; (c) LCD screen; (d) DIP switches; (e) input pins; (f) settings buttons; (B) back side of the board.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Capacitance measurements of 9 capacitors; (a) the absolute percentage difference between the nominal capacitance value, an LCR meter, and the developed circuit; (b) the relative difference between the developed circuit and the reference LCR meter.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Resistance measurements of 9 resistors; (a) the absolute percentage difference between the nominal resistance value, a benchtop multimeter, and the developed circuit; (b) the relative difference between the developed circuit and the reference multimeter.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Normalized capacitance change over time for S protein.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Normalized capacitance change over time for 4 swab samples, 2 negative to the virus (N1, N2) and 2 positive to the virus (P1, P2).
Figure 8
Figure 8
Mobile application results; (a) test positive for S protein; (b) test negative for S protein.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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