Rapid Detection of COVID-19 Causative Virus (SARS-CoV-2) in Human Nasopharyngeal Swab Specimens Using Field-Effect Transistor-Based Biosensor

By Giwan Seo, Geonhee Lee, Mi Jeong Kim, Seung-Hwa Baek, M. Choi, K. Ku, Chang-Seop Lee, Sangmi Jun, Daeui Park, H. Kim and 5 more. ACS Nano, 2020

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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a newly emerging human infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, previously called 2019-nCoV). Based on the rapid increase in the rate of human infection, the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. Because no specific drugs or vaccines for COVID-19 are yet available, early diagnosis and management are crucial for containing the outbreak. Here, we report a field-effect transistor (FET)-based biosensing device for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples. The sensor was produced by coating graphene sheets of the FET with a specific antibody against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The performance of the sensor was determined using antigen protein, cultured virus, and nasopharyngeal swab specimens from COVID-19 patients. Our FET device could detect the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein at concentrations of 1 fg/mL in phosphate-buffered saline and 100 fg/mL clinical transport medium. In addition, the FET sensor successfully detected SARS-CoV-2 in culture medium (limit of detection [LOD]: 1.6 × 101 pfu/mL) and clinical samples (LOD: 2.42 × 102 copies/mL). Thus, we have successfully fabricated a promising FET biosensor for SARS-CoV-2; our device is a highly sensitive immunological diagnostic method for COVID-19 that requires no sample pretreatment or labeling.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37b3f3af9cf15900b832db1d0bd77942ac1e674a