Application of Molecular Imprinted Polymer Technology to Detect the SARS-COV-2 Virus Through the Development of a Novel Breathalyzer-Like Device

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over 2 million deaths and affected around 100 million people worldwide (CDC). Across the globe, a pandemic warning system had failed when the SARS-CoV-2 virus hit. The Key reason behind the ineffective response or unpreparedness is the lack of rapid diagnostic teating at the onset of the pandemic that could have been used to widely detect the presence of the virus. The lack of a highly sensitive rapid test, forces laboratories and hospitals to use conventional nucleic acid testing methods which are timing consuming, labor intensive and expensive[4]. To solve this problem, we propose a 'breathalyzer-like' device that will be able to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in seconds while being extremely user friendly, highly sensitive and cost effective. This breathalyzer-like device will detect SARS-CoV-2 by the binding of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) to the virus's spike protein. MIPs are synthetic receptor molecules that can mimic ACE-2 receptors and offer an inexpensive rapid, sensitive, easy-to-use, and higly slective receptor for electrochemical biosensors[8]. MIP based detection has been widely used in literature in the detection of human viral or bacterial phathogens which has shown >90% accuracy.