One-Step-One-Pot Hydrothermally Derived Metal-Organic-Framework-Nanohybrids for Integrated Point-of-Care Diagnostics of SARS-CoV-2 Viral Antigen/Pseudovirus Utilizing an Advanced Handheld Portable Device

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global catastrophe, affecting the health and economy of the human community. It is required to mitigate the impact of pandemics by developing rapid molecular diagnostics for SARS-CoV-2 virus detection. In this context, this study aims at presenting a real-time, handheld portable POC device for various viral antigen detection, including recombinant SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein and SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus. This initiates the development of the first handheld portable device for improved molecular diagnostics of SARS-CoV-2 detection based on one-step-one-pot hydrothermally derived CoFeBDCNH2-CoFe2O4 MOF-nanohybrids. This study utilizes PalmSens-EmStat Go POC device to conduct the electrochemical evaluations, showing a limit of detection (LOD) for recombinant SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein of 6.18 fg/mL and 6.20 fg/mL in buffer and 10% serum-containing media, respectively. To validate virus detection in the POC platform, a comparative analysis has been carried out using commercial CH instrument by performing dose dependent studies under similar experimental conditions to the device. The comparable results of these studies indicate the high detection performance of MOF nanocomposite derived from one-step-one-pot hydrothermal synthesis for SARS-CoV-2 detection for the first time. Further, the performance of the sensor has also been tested in the presence of Omicron BA.2 and wild-type D614G pseudoviruses.