However, testing in many countries, including the United States, has lagged because of limited supplies of some reagents and a backlog of samples awaiting available PCR machines and laboratory personnel. Health experts agree that expanded testing is crucial for controlling the spread of COVID-19. The impetus to overcome LSPR’s difficulties may come from the desire to bring the coronavirus under control. For example, computed tomography scanning and culturing, does not provide quick or real-time results. The same article also noted that SPR technology has several advantages: “It can be automated, requires few biological reagents for method development, and generates results in just a few minutes.” In these respects, SPR may outshine other RT-PCR alternatives. Vendors’ focus on research and pharmaceutical applications partly explains why clinical laboratorians are not very familiar with the instruments and may have the perception that the technique is too complex for their needs.” Several firms supply the instruments, and these companies primarily design and market their instruments for academic and pharmaceutical laboratories. In addition, only a handful of companies make the instruments. “[The instrumentation is expensive, ranging anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000 depending on the throughput or number of channels in the instrument. Such limitations were discussed in an article (“ The Role of Surface Plasmon Resonance in Clinical Laboratories”) that appeared last year in Clinical Laboratory News: Also, certain practical limitations of SPR systems will need to be addressed. “Under the outbreak background of COVID-19,” the authors concluded, “this proposed dual-functional LSPR biosensor can provide a reliable and easy-to-implement diagnosis platform to improve the diagnostic accuracy in clinical tests and relieve the pressure on PCR-based tests.”īefore that happens, the system will need to be tested on intact viral RNA from patient samples. The assay detected amounts of viral RNA below those present in respiratory swabs in a matter of minutes. “Our dual-functional LSPR biosensor,” the article’s authors declared, “exhibits a high sensitivity toward the selected SARS-CoV-2 sequences with a lower detection limit down to the concentration of 0.22 pM and allows precise detection of the specific target in a multigene mixture.” In this way, the researchers could discriminate between SARS-CoV-2 and its close relative, SARS-CoV-1. For example, a nucleic acid “zipper” missing a couple of teeth-indicating a partial mismatch-would unzip under these conditions. In other words, the ETH Zurich researchers (led by Jing Wang, PhD) used a laser to heat up the nanoparticles, making it more difficult for imperfectly matched sequences to remain attached, reducing false-positive results. “The localized PPT heat is capable to elevate the in situ hybridization temperature and facilitate the accurate discrimination of two similar gene sequences.” “For better sensing performance, the thermoplasmonic heat is generated on the same chip-based AuNIs when illuminated at their plasmonic resonance frequency,” the article’s authors noted.
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