Development of ultrasensitive electrochemical immunosensor for rapid point-of-care Covid-19 detection

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While WHO recently announced that the end of pandemic is "in sight", it is evident that Covid-19 will persist as a long-term epidemic disease with the continuous appearance of new variants. During the pandemic era, besides vaccination the most efficient way to protect public/individual health is to carry out accurate, large-scale testing of the virus infection, which require highly sensitive, rapid, and cost-effective detection tools. However, these cannot be met by the currently used PCR technology (lab-based molecular technique that is accurate but costly and time consuming) or by commercial rapid tests (colorimetric immunosensors with limited sensitivity and reproducibility). This NSERC Alliance proposal initials a collaborative project between Dr. Yu's research team at Simon Fraser University and a local company, eSenso Biotech Inc. for the development of an electrochemical immunoassay for Covid-19 that can meet above mentioned requirements. We will design electrochemical immunosensors using inexpensive carbon tape to fabricate well-controlled arrays of gold nanoclusters as the working electrode, and validated DNA aptamers for recognizing SARS-CoV-2 virus/antigens captured on the surface. Besides the expected, amplified sensing signal, the translation of the sensors to the eSenso portable device (testing strips and miniaturized electrochemical tester) will lead to an affordable detection kit as a routine tool for point-of-care Covid-19 testing. Successful completion of this project will develop ties and foster relationship between SFU and eSenso that will lead to future collaborations for the detection of pathogens associated with many other types of diseases. The implementation of this project will also provide great R&D training ground for graduate students and technicians in the areas of analytical sciences and biomedical engineering.