In the COVID-19 pandemic era, at-home, portable tests were crucial for knowing when to wear a mask or isolate at home. Now, Penn State engineering researchers have developed a portable and wireless device to simultaneously detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and vitamin C, a critical nutrient that helps bolster infection resistance, by integrating commercial transistors with printed laser-induced graphene.
Their results were published as the cover article of the November 2024 issue of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. By simultaneously detecting the virus and vitamin C levels, the test could help individuals and their health care providers decide on more effective treatment options, the researchers said. For example, someone with low vitamin C levels may benefit from a supplemental boost, while someone with normal or high vitamin C levels may need to consider other options.
"There are several studies that show that vitamin C can help with managing the symptoms of viral respiratory infections like SARS-CoV-2," said corresponding author Aida Ebrahimi, the Thomas and Sheila Roell Early Career Associate Professor of electrical engineering, of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering. "There are testing platforms for vitamin C, but they are bulky, expensive and not suitable for point-of-care, at home testing. Our device is portable, easy to operate and can detect vitamin C and SARS-CoV-2 simultaneously, with the option to add new target molecules to the same testing platform in the future."
Researchers chose to test vitamin C and SARS-CoV-2 not only for their clinical importance for patients, but also to demonstrate the versatility of their testing approach.
"We used vitamin C and SARS-CoV-2 as model targets to demonstrate the applicability of our approach for detecting biomarkers with the two common types of sensors used in the biosensors community: those with a capture element to 'capture' the target molecules, and those without one," Ebrahimi said. "We used the molecules to show our improvement in the test's functionality compared to existing methods."
