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，在表面上持续数天，威胁公众和医院工作人员的生命。为了应对COVID-19诊断中的挑战，两位主要研究者（PI）-来自东北大学的Nian Sun和来自马萨诸塞大学医学院的Jeremy Luban将开发一种用于空气中SARS-CoV-2病毒的手持式气体传感器，该传感器将在1~2秒内立即检测呼出气和表面上的SARS-CoV-2，基于他们在不同气体传感器上的成功。与市场上用于COVID-19诊断的其他最先进技术相比，所提出的电化学传感器具有多重优势，包括超高灵敏度和极端选择性、低成本以及快速响应和恢复。这项关于用于检测空气中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尺寸小得多的分子设计的。 这些传感器将为COVID-19提供即时的护理点诊断，并且可以通过感测不同的生物标志物化学物质而容易地适用于其他疾病的诊断。这些提出的SARS-CoV-2传感器是新型的电化学传感器，具有SARS-CoV-2颗粒的模板空位，这导致极高的选择性，比竞争气体传感器好6~9个数量级的每四次方子部分（sub-ppq）灵敏度，快速的传感器响应和1~2秒的恢复时间，在不同的温度和湿度环境下，可长时间使用一年以上。这两个项目负责人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（Luban）方面拥有该项目所需的互补专长和资源。研究人员计划开展的研究任务包括SARS-CoV-2气体传感器的制造、敏感性测试、特异性测试以及SARS-CoV-2传感器对大流行期间出现的刺突蛋白变体的特异性和敏感性测试。将进行迭代传感器制造和测试，以提高传感器的灵敏度和特异性的气体传感器与SARS-CoV-2和控制病毒，并使SARS-CoV-2传感器测试在重症监护病房和人体上的COVID-19诊断。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.