ABSTRACT
A portable and low-cost electrochemical immunosensor platform is developed for rapid (13 min) and accurate quantification of SARS-CoV-2 serum antibodies (10.1 ng/mL − 60 µg/mL for IgG and 1.64 ng/mL − 50 µg/mL for IgM). No obvious cross-reactivity with other interference proteins was observed. Stable performance of the immunosensor within 24-week storage at room temperature was achieved. The practical use of the immunosensor was demonstrated using real patient samples. © 2021 MicroTAS 2021 - 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a worldwide health crisis. Rapid diagnosis, new therapeutics and effective vaccines will all be required to stop the spread of COVID-19. Quantitative evaluation of serum antibody levels against the SARS-CoV-2 virus provides a means of monitoring a patient's immune response to a natural viral infection or vaccination, as well as evidence of a prior infection. In this paper, a portable and low-cost electrochemical immunosensor is developed for the rapid and accurate quantification of SARS-CoV-2 serum antibodies. The immunosensor is capable of quantifying the concentrations of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in human serum. For IgG and IgM, it provides measurements in the range of 10.1 ng/mL - 60 µg/mL and 1.64 ng/mL - 50 µg/mL, respectively, both with an assay time of 13 min. We also developed device stabilization and storage strategies to achieve stable performance of the immunosensor over 24-week storage at room temperature. We evaluated the performance of the immunosensor using COVID-19 patient serum samples collected at different time points after symptom onset. The rapid and sensitive detection of IgG and IgM provided by our immunosensor fulfills the need of rapid COVID-19 serological testing for both point-of-care diagnosis and population immunity screening.