Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON M4P 1R2, Canada.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 May 24;23(11):5018. doi: 10.3390/s23115018.
Viral infections can pose a major threat to public health by causing serious illness, leading to pandemics, and burdening healthcare systems. The global spread of such infections causes disruptions to every aspect of life including business, education, and social life. Fast and accurate diagnosis of viral infections has significant implications for saving lives, preventing the spread of the diseases, and minimizing social and economic damages. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based techniques are commonly used to detect viruses in the clinic. However, PCR has several drawbacks, as highlighted during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, such as long processing times and the requirement for sophisticated laboratory instruments. Therefore, there is an urgent need for fast and accurate techniques for virus detection. For this purpose, a variety of biosensor systems are being developed to provide rapid, sensitive, and high-throughput viral diagnostic platforms, enabling quick diagnosis and efficient control of the virus's spread. Optical devices, in particular, are of great interest due to their advantages such as high sensitivity and direct readout. The current review discusses solid-phase optical sensing techniques for virus detection, including fluorescence-based sensors, surface plasmon resonance (SPR), surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), optical resonators, and interferometry-based platforms. Then, we focus on an interferometric biosensor developed by our group, the single-particle interferometric reflectance imaging sensor (SP-IRIS), which has the capability to visualize single nanoparticles, to demonstrate its application for digital virus detection.
病毒感染可通过导致严重疾病、引发大流行以及加重医疗保健系统负担，对公众健康构成重大威胁。此类感染在全球范围内的传播，会扰乱包括商业、教育和社会生活在内的生活的各个方面。快速准确地诊断病毒感染对于挽救生命、防止疾病传播以及最小化社会和经济损失具有重要意义。基于聚合酶链反应（PCR）的技术常用于临床检测病毒。然而，PCR 存在一些缺点，如处理时间长以及需要复杂的实验室仪器，这在最近的 COVID-19 大流行中得到了凸显。因此，迫切需要快速准确的病毒检测技术。为此，正在开发各种生物传感器系统，以提供快速、灵敏和高通量的病毒诊断平台，实现快速诊断和有效控制病毒的传播。特别是光学设备因其高灵敏度和直接读数等优点而备受关注。本综述讨论了用于病毒检测的固相光学传感技术，包括基于荧光的传感器、表面等离子体共振（SPR）、表面增强拉曼散射（SERS）、光学谐振器和干涉仪平台。然后，我们将重点介绍我们小组开发的干涉生物传感器，即单粒子干涉反射成像传感器（SP-IRIS），它具有可视化单个纳米粒子的能力，以展示其在数字病毒检测中的应用。
