Viruses are infectious agents that pose significant threats to plants, animals, and humans. The current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has spread globally and resulted in over 2 million deaths and immeasurable financial losses. Rapid and sensitive virus diagnostics become crucially important in controlling the spread of a pandemic before effective treatment and vaccines are available. Gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based testing holds great potential for this urgent unmet biomedical need. In this review, we describe the most recent advances in AuNP-based viral detection applications. In addition, we discuss considerations for the design of AuNP-based SARS-CoV-2 testings. Finally, we highlight and propose important parameters to consider for the future development of effective AuNP-based testings that would be critical for not only this COVID-19 pandemic, but also potential future outbreaks. This article is categorized under: Diagnostic Tools > Biosensing Diagnostic Tools > In Vitro Nanoparticle-Based Sensing.
Keywords: COVID-19; electrochemical detection; fluorescence resonance energy transfer; gold nanoparticle; in vitro diagnostics; lateral flow assay; microfluidic; point-of-care; surface plasmon resonance.
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