Open Access

ARTICLE

Identification of SARS-CoV-2 by gold nanoparticles

by LORIS RIZZELLO^1,2,3, VALERIA DE MATTEIS^4,*

1 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Milan, Milano, 20133, Italy
2 National Institute of Molecular Genetics (INGM), Milano, 20122, Italy
3 Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, 08028, Spain
4 Department of Mathematics and Physics “Ennio De Giorgi”, via per Arnesano, 73100, Lecce, Italy

* Corresponding Author: Valeria De Matteis,

BIOCELL 2022, 46(11), 2369-2380. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2022.021059

Received 28 December 2021; Accepted 18 May 2022; Issue published 07 July 2022

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks highlighted the need for effective, reliable, fast, easy-to-do and cheap diagnostics procedures. We pragmatically experienced that an early positive-case detection, inevitably coupled with a mass vaccination campaign, is a milestone to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can indeed play a crucial role in this context, as their physicochemical, optics and electronics properties are being extensively used in photothermal therapy (PTT), radiation therapy (RT), drug delivery and diagnostic. AuNPs can be synthesized by several approaches to obtain different sizes and shapes that can be easily functionalized with many kinds of molecules such as antibodies, proteins, probes, and lipids. In addition, AuNPs showed high biocompatibility making them useful tool in medicine field. We thus reviewed here the most relevant evidence on AuNPs as effective way to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antigens. We trust future diagnostic efforts must take this ‘old-fashioned’ nanotechnology tool into consideration for the development and commercialization of reliable and feasible detection kits.

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Keywords

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