Ultraprecise Antigen 10-in-1 Pool Testing by Multiantibodies Transistor Assay
Changhao Dai, Mingquan Guo, Yanling Wu, Banpeng Cao, Xuejun Wang, Yungen Wu, Kang Hua, Derong Kong, Zhaoqin Zhu, Tianlei Ying, Yunqi Liu, Dacheng Wei
Abstract
Effective screening of infectious diseases requires a fast, cheap, and population-scale testing. Antigen pool testing can increase the test rate and shorten the screening time, thus being a valuable approach for epidemic prevention and control. However, the overall percent agreement (OPA) with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is one-half to three-quarters, hampering it from being a comprehensive method, especially pool testing, beyond the gold-standard PCR. Here, a multiantibodies transistor assay is developed for sensitive and highly precise antigen pool testing. The multiantibodies capture SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 proteins with different configurations, resulting in an antigen-binding affinity down to 0.34 fM. The limit of detection reaches 3.5 × 10–17 g mL–1SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 protein in artificial saliva, 4–5 orders of magnitude lower than existing transistor sensors. The testing of 60 nasopharyngeal swabs exhibits ∼100% OPA with PCR within an average diagnoses time of 38.9 s. Owing to its highly precise feature, a portable integrated platform is fabricated, which achieves 10-in-1 pooled screening for high testing throughput. This work solves the long-standing problem of antigen pool testing, enabling it to be a valuable tool in precise diagnoses and population-wide screening of COVID-19 or other epidemics in the future.