A team of scientists have developed a new nano biosensor that is able to quickly detect the influenza and similar viruses with its upconversion luminescence resonance energy transfer (LRET), which is an optical approach.
The approach uses the LRET process to gain an ultrasensitive virus detection.
The team, from the Department of Applied Physics (AP) and Interdisciplinary Division of Biomedical Engineering (BME) of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), created the biosensor with simple operational procedures.
Current biological methods for detecting influenza viruses involve genetic analysis using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) as well as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Both of these are used in immunology. Unfortunately, they are expensive, time consuming, and relatively inaccurate.
The new biosensor will help health professional simplify their operational procedures, which would significant decrease its testing duration. Typical influenza and virus detection tests take between one and three days; with the biosensor, this would take just two to three hours. This is over 10 times faster than the current, traditional approaches that clinics use.
In addition, the test costs 80 percent less than the traditional testing approaches. This technology can help to decrease the costs of detecting viruses while also demonstrating the development of fast, low-cost, ultrasensitive biosensors.
