The Korea Research Institute of Bioscience & Biotechnology (KRIBB) said Monday that a joint research team has developed a platform that can quickly detect multiple respiratory viruses in the field.
The state-run institute said it will likely be used as a basis for developing diagnostic devices in the event of new and variant infectious diseases, such as Covid-19, in the future.
Dr. Hong Jung-joo of the Korea National Primate Research Center, Professor Kwon Oh-seok of Sung Kyun Kwan University, and Song Hyun-seok of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology led the joint research team.
According to KRIBB, Infectious disease outbreaks can be categorized into two main types: the re-emergence of an existing infectious disease in an appropriate environment and the emergence of a new infectious disease.
Major infectious disease outbreaks of the 21st century, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012, and Coronavirus Disease 19 (Covid-19) in 2019, were caused by respiratory viruses.
When new respiratory infectious diseases occur, diagnostic devices that can quickly and accurately diagnose them are essential. Still, existing diagnostic devices have low sensitivity and specificity, limiting their use for point-of-care diagnosis.
Although on-site diagnostic devices improved dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, they still require separate tests, such as PCR, for accurate diagnosis.
Against this backdrop, the team developed an on-site platform using graphene that can simultaneously screen multiple respiratory viruses with high sensitivity in tens of seconds.
Previous graphene-based biosensors have been limited in their use in on-site diagnostics due to the limitations of the stacking method. Combining receptors that accept external factors with graphene materials results in noisy signals and poor stability in extreme environments.
The team developed a receptor that can selectively detect multiple species of respiratory viruses based on a multichannel transistor that displays a pattern even at the slightest stimulus, along with an interfacing compound that can transfer the signal from the receptor to graphene without interference.
In addition, by forming a passivation layer that coats the surface of graphene with a thin film without changing the material properties, the team secured the stability of the stacked structure between the virus receptor, the interfacing compound, and the graphene material and produced a sensor that can reliably transmit signals without degradation even in external environments.
In particular, the sensor developed by the research team can be diagnosed without pretreatment of saliva (saliva), thus securing convenience, and it has been validated in a primate model infected with delta and omicron, enhancing its potential for field use.
"We hope that the development of an on-site rapid diagnostic platform that has been validated in primates will help us prepare for the upcoming pandemic of novel respiratory infectious diseases," Dr. Hong said,
Professor Kwon agreed, saying, “The platform we developed can monitor multiple respiratory viruses simultaneously and quickly with high sensitivity to prevent the spread of high-risk infectious diseases in advance, enabling a flexible response to the next pandemic."
Dr. Song also said, "The convergence with the high-sensitivity sensor platform has enabled the development of high-performance diagnostic technology, which is expected to be used to respond to the spread of new and variant infectious diseases in the future."
The study was published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials (IF 29.4), a global journal in nanoscience, on March 1 under the title “Synchronous diagnosis of respiratory viruses variants via receptonics based on modeling receptor-ligand dynamics.”