Li Nantao, Zhao Bin, Stavins Robert, Peinetti Ana Sol, Chauhan Neha, Bashir Rashid, Cunningham Brian T, King William P, Lu Yi, Wang Xing, Valera Enrique
Carle Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Curr Opin Solid State Mater Sci. 2022 Feb;26(1):100966. doi: 10.1016/j.cossms.2021.100966. Epub 2021 Nov 20.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed fundamental limitations in the current model for infectious disease diagnosis and serology, based upon complex assay workflows, laboratory-based instrumentation, and expensive materials for managing samples and reagents. The lengthy time delays required to obtain test results, the high cost of gold-standard PCR tests, and poor sensitivity of rapid point-of-care tests contributed directly to society's inability to efficiently identify COVID-19-positive individuals for quarantine, which in turn continues to impact return to normal activities throughout the economy. Over the past year, enormous resources have been invested to develop more effective rapid tests and laboratory tests with greater throughput, yet the vast majority of engineering and chemistry approaches are merely incremental improvements to existing methods for nucleic acid amplification, lateral flow test strips, and enzymatic amplification assays for protein-based biomarkers. Meanwhile, widespread commercial availability of new test kits continues to be hampered by the cost and time required to develop single-use disposable microfluidic plastic cartridges manufactured by injection molding. Through development of novel technologies for sensitive, selective, rapid, and robust viral detection and more efficient approaches for scalable manufacturing of microfluidic devices, we can be much better prepared for future management of infectious pathogen outbreaks. Here, we describe how photonic metamaterials, graphene nanomaterials, designer DNA nanostructures, and polymers amenable to scalable additive manufacturing are being applied towards overcoming the fundamental limitations of currently dominant COVID-19 diagnostic approaches. In this paper, we review how several distinct classes of nanomaterials and nanochemistry enable simple assay workflows, high sensitivity, inexpensive instrumentation, point-of-care sample-to-answer virus diagnosis, and rapidly scaled manufacturing.
新冠疫情暴露了当前传染病诊断和血清学模型的根本局限性，该模型基于复杂的检测工作流程、基于实验室的仪器设备以及用于管理样本和试剂的昂贵材料。获取检测结果所需的长时间延迟、金标准PCR检测的高成本以及即时检测快速诊断的低灵敏度，直接导致社会无法有效识别新冠病毒阳性个体进行隔离，进而持续影响整个经济恢复正常活动。在过去一年里，已投入大量资源来开发更有效的快速检测和通量更高的实验室检测，但绝大多数工程和化学方法只是对现有核酸扩增、侧向流动试纸条以及基于蛋白质生物标志物的酶促扩增检测方法的渐进式改进。与此同时，新检测试剂盒的广泛商业可用性仍然受到通过注塑制造一次性微流控塑料盒所需的成本和时间的阻碍。通过开发用于灵敏、选择性、快速和稳健的病毒检测的新技术以及用于微流控设备可扩展制造的更高效方法，我们可以更好地为未来管理传染病原体爆发做好准备。在此，我们描述了光子超材料、石墨烯纳米材料、定制DNA纳米结构以及适用于可扩展增材制造的聚合物如何被用于克服当前占主导地位的新冠病毒诊断方法的根本局限性。在本文中，我们回顾了几类不同的纳米材料和纳米化学如何实现简单的检测工作流程、高灵敏度、廉价的仪器设备、即时检测从样本到得出病毒诊断结果以及快速扩大规模的制造。
