Rapid antibody diagnostics for SARS-CoV-2 adaptive immune response.

The emergence of a pandemic scale respiratory illness (COVID-19: coronavirus disease 2019) and the lack of the world's readiness to prevent its spread resulted in an unprecedented rise of biomedical diagnostic industries, as they took lead to provide efficient diagnostic solutions for COVID-19. However, these circumstances also led to numerous emergency use authorizations without appropriate evaluation that compromised standards, which could result in a larger than usual number of false-positive or false-negative results, leading to unwanted ambiguity in already confusing realities of the pandemic-hit closures of the world economy. This review is aimed at comparing the claimed or reported clinical sensitivity and clinical specificity of commercially available rapid antibody diagnostics with independently evaluated clinical performance results of the tests. Thereby, we not only present the types of modern antibody diagnostics and their working principles but summarize their experimental evaluations and observed clinical efficiencies to highlight the research, development, and commercialization issues with future challenges. Still, it must be emphasized that the serological or antibody tests do not serve the purpose of early diagnosis but are more suitable for epidemiology and screening populaces with an active immune response, recognizing convalescent plasma donors, and determining vaccine efficacy.

Screen-Printed Graphene/Carbon Electrodes on Paper Substrates as Impedance Sensors for Detection of Coronavirus in Nasopharyngeal Fluid Samples.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of the global pandemic, which has resulted in more than one million deaths with tens of millions reported cases, requires a fast, accurate, and portable testing mechanism operable in the field environment. Electrochemical sensors, based on paper substrates with portable electrochemical devices, can prove an excellent alternative in mitigating the economic and public health effects of the disease. Herein, we present an impedance biosensor for the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein utilizing the IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike antibody. This label-free platform utilizing screen-printed electrodes works on the principle of redox reaction impedance of a probe and can detect antigen spikes directly in nasopharyngeal fluid as well as virus samples collected in the universal transport medium (UTM). High conductivity graphene/carbon ink is used for this purpose so as to have a small background impedance that leads to a wider dynamic range of detection. Antibody immobilization onto the electrode surface was conducted through a chemical entity or a biological entity to see their effect; where a biological immobilization can enhance the antibody loading and thereby the sensitivity. In both cases, we were able to have a very low limit of quantification (i.e., 0.25 fg/mL), however, the linear range was 3 orders of magnitude wider for the biological entity-based immobilization. The specificity of the sensor was also tested against high concentrations of H1N1 flu antigens with no appreciable response. The most optimized sensors are used to identify negative and positive COVID-19 samples with great accuracy and precision.