RAPID: COVID-19: New Handheld Gas Sensors for Airborne SARS-CoV-2 Virus: Instant COVID-19 Diagnosis from Exhaled Breath

传染性SARS-CoV-2可以在空气中持续数小时，在物体表面持续数天，威胁到公众和医院工作人员的生命。为了应对COVID-19诊断中的挑战，两位首席研究员（PIs）来自东北大学的孙年（Nian Sun）和麻省理工大学医学院的杰里米·鲁班（Jeremy Luban）将开发一种手持式空气中SARS-CoV-2病毒气体传感器，基于他们在不同气体传感器上取得的成功，该传感器将在1~2秒内在呼出气体和表面上立即检测出SARS-CoV-2。与市场上其他新型冠状病毒诊断技术相比，该电化学传感器具有超高灵敏度和极选择性、低成本、快速响应和恢复等多重优势。这项用于检测空气中SARS-CoV-2病毒的新型电化学传感器的工作代表了电化学传感器基础研究的重大进展，这些传感器通常是为小得多的分子设计的。这些传感器将为COVID-19提供即时护理点诊断，并可通过感应不同的生物标志物化学物质，很容易地用于其他疾病的诊断。这些新型的SARS-CoV-2传感器是一种新型的电化学传感器，具有极高的选择性，灵敏度比竞争性气体传感器高6~9个数量级，传感器响应速度快，恢复时间为1~2秒，在不同温度和湿度环境下的使用寿命超过一年。这两个pi在传感器和电子工程（Sun）以及病毒、蛋白质、生物化学和分子药理学（鲁班）方面具有互补的专业知识和资源。pi计划开展的研究课题包括：制作新型冠状病毒气体传感器、灵敏度测试、特异性测试、检测新型冠状病毒传感器在大流行过程中出现的刺突蛋白变异的特异性和灵敏度。将进行传感器的迭代制作和测试，以提高带有SARS-CoV-2和对照病毒的气体传感器的传感器灵敏度和特异性，并使SARS-CoV-2传感器在重症监护病房和人身上进行测试，以诊断COVID-19。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Infectious SARS-CoV-2 can persist in air for hours and on surfaces for days, threatening the lives of the general public, and of hospital staff. To address the challenges in the diagnosis of COVID-19, the two principal investigators (PIs) Nian Sun from Northeastern University and Jeremy Luban from UMass Medical School will develop a handheld gas sensor for SARS-CoV-2 virus in air, which will instantly detect SARS-CoV-2 in 1~2 seconds in exhaled breath and on surfaces, based on their demonstrated success on different gas sensors. Compared to other state-of-the-art technologies in the market for COVID-19 diagnosis, the proposed electrochemical sensor has multifold advantages, including ultra-high sensitivity and extreme selectivity, low-cost, and fast response and recovery. This work on novel electrochemical sensors for SARS-CoV-2 virus detection in air represents significant advancement in fundamental research on electrochemical sensors which are typically designed for molecules with much smaller sizes. These sensors will provide instant point of care diagnosis for COVID-19 and could be readily adapted for diagnosis of other diseases through sensing different biomarker chemicals.These proposed SARS-CoV-2 sensors are novel electrochemical sensors with templated vacancies of SARS-CoV-2 particles, which leads to extremely high selectivity, sub-part per quadrillion (sub-ppq) sensitivity which is 6~9 orders of magnitude better than competitive gas sensors, fast sensor response and recovery time of 1~2 seconds, and long durability of over one year in different temperature and humidity environments. The two PIs have complementary expertise and resources needed for this project on sensors and electronics engineering (Sun), and on virus, proteins, biochemistry and molecular pharmacology (Luban). The PIs plan to carry out research tasks to include fabrication of SARS-CoV-2 gas sensors, sensitivity test, specificity test, and test specificity and sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 sensors for spike protein variants that appear over the course of the pandemic. The iterative sensor fabrication and tests will be conducted to improve the sensor sensitivity and specificity of the gas sensors with SARS-CoV-2 and with control viruses, and to enable the SARS-CoV-2 sensor tests in ICUs and on humans for COVID-19 diagnosis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.