Research Progress and Future Trends of Microfluidic Paper-Based Analytical Devices in In-Vitro Diagnosis.

In vitro diagnosis (IVD) has become a hot topic in laboratory research and achievement transformation. However, due to the high cost, and time-consuming and complex operation of traditional technologies, some new technologies are being introduced into IVD, to solve the existing problems. As a result, IVD has begun to develop toward point-of-care testing (POCT), a subdivision field of IVD. The pandemic has made governments and health institutions realize the urgency of accelerating the development of POCT. Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs), a low-cost, high-efficiency, and easy-to-operate detection platform, have played a significant role in advancing the development of IVD. µPADs are composed of paper as the core material, certain unique substances as reagents for processing the paper, and sensing devices, as auxiliary equipment. The published reviews on the same topic lack a comprehensive and systematic introduction to µPAD classification and research progress in IVD segmentation. In this paper, we first briefly introduce the origin of µPADs and their role in promoting IVD, in the introduction section. Then, processing and detection methods for µPADs are summarized, and the innovative achievements of µPADs in IVD are reviewed. Finally, we discuss and prospect the upgrade and improvement directions of µPADs, in terms of portability, sensitivity, and automation, to help researchers clarify the progress and overcome the difficulties in subsequent µPAD research.

Conventional and Microfluidic Methods for the Detection of Nucleic Acid of SARS-CoV-2.

Nucleic acid testing (NAT) played a crucial role in containing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 during the epidemic. The gold standard technique, the quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) technique, is currently used by the government and medical boards to detect SARS-CoV-2. Due to the limitations of this technology, it is not capable of meeting the needs of large-scale rapid detection. To solve this problem, many new techniques for detecting nucleic acids of SARS-CoV-2 have been reported. Therefore, a review that systematically and comprehensively introduces and compares various detection technologies is needed. In this paper, we not only review the traditional NAT but also provide an overview of microfluidic-based NAT technologies and summarize and discuss the characteristics and development prospects of these techniques.