Recent events have made public health officials acutely aware of the importance of rapidly and accurately detecting acts of bioterrorism. Because bioterrorism is difficult to predict or prevent, reliable platforms to rapidly detect and identify biothreat agents are important to minimize the spread of these agents and to protect the public health. These platforms must not only be sensitive and specific, but must also be able to accurately detect a variety of pathogens, including modified or previously uncharacterized agents, directly from complex sample matrices. Various commercial tests utilizing biochemical, immunological, nucleic acid, and bioluminescence procedures are currently available to identify biological threat agents. Newer tests have also been developed to identify such agents using aptamers, biochips, evanescent wave biosensors, cantilevers, living cells, and other innovative technologies. This review describes these current and developing technologies and considers challenges to rapid, accurate detection of biothreat agents. Although there is no ideal platform, many of these technologies have proved invaluable for the detection and identification of biothreat agents.

Current and Developing Technologies for Monitoring Agents of Bioterrorism and Biowarfare

The development of technology for use in resource-poor countries encounters a specific type of challenge not ordinarily faced in academic science: the technology must be inexpensive and it must work with minimal infrastructure. This challenge is particularly severe when the problems being solved are, by their nature, ones that require high-technology solutions. For these kinds of problems, the elegance of the solutions must lie in the use of science to guide the assembly of readily available components into a simple, workable, and well-integrated package. In this paper, we describe an integrated approach to a miniaturized immunoassay called a “POCKET immunoassay” (“POCKET” is short for portable and cost-effective). This immunoassay has, we believe, the potential to be inexpensive and operable with minimal equipment and technical skills, and shows an analytical performance approaching that of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) performed in a bench-top format in clinical laboratories. A top priority for improving health in developing countries is technology for simple, affordable diagnosis of infectious diseases. Immunoassays such as ELISA are the most reliable and widely used methods for detecting antigens and antibodies, but they require expensive and bulky instruments for optical detection, hours of incubation for diffusionlimited reactions on the surface, and many steps of pipetting. 3] These constraints prevent the use of ELISA in settings that require low-cost or compact equipment, and in environments that lack electricity or trained personnel. One application with these requirements is the detection of infectious diseases in the field in developing countries; 4,5] other potential uses include point-of-care diagnostics by first responders and in health clinics, and detection of biological warfare agents in the field. Immunochromatographic assays (also known as “strip tests” and “lateral-flow

An Integrated Approach to a Portable and Low‐Cost Immunoassay for Resource‐Poor Settings

Silver-enhanced nanoparticle-labeled immunoassays provide a simple, low-cost, and effective way of detecting antigens in dilute solutions. The physical mechanisms behind their operation, however, have not been fully investigated. We present a semiquantitative approach for optimizing sandwich nanoparticle immunoassays using an adsorption-controlled kinetic model. Primary antibodies were immobilized on a solid substrate to bind the target antigens in solution. An optical signal was measured by secondary labeling of antigens with gold nanoparticles and their enhancement by silver nucleation. The opacity of the silver-enhanced spots was quantified by densitometry. The selectivity of the sandwich immunoassays was adequately high, and antigen concentrations as low as 0.1 μg cm-3 (4 ng total) were detected reproducibly. The role of mass transfer was investigated, and a model was developed to optimize the performance of immunoassays by correlating the opacities of silver spots to the concentration and incubation ...

Characterization and Optimization of Gold Nanoparticle-Based Silver-Enhanced Immunoassays

Each year, infectious diseases are responsible for millions of deaths, most of which occur in the rural areas of developing countries. Many of the infectious disease diagnostic tools used today require a great deal of time, a laboratory setting, and trained personnel. Due to this, the need for effective point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tools is greatly increasing with an emphasis on affordability, portability, sensitivity, specificity, timeliness, and ease of use. In this Review, we discuss the various diagnostic modalities that have been utilized toward this end and are being further developed to create POC diagnostic technologies, and we focus on potential effectiveness in resource-limited settings. The main modalities discussed herein are optical-, electrochemical-, magnetic-, and colorimetric-based modalities utilized in diagnostic technologies for infectious diseases. Each of these modalities feature pros and cons when considering application in POC settings but, overall, reveal a promising outlook for...

/pdf/a-comparison-of-optical-electrochemical-magnetic-and-22c7ejeefn.pdf

A Comparison of Optical, Electrochemical, Magnetic, and Colorimetric Point-of-Care Biosensors for Infectious Disease Diagnosis

Nanomaterials for early detection of cancer biomarker with special emphasis on gold nanoparticles in immunoassays/sensors.

A swab collection and recovery device comprising: an elongate tube having at least one side wall, an open top, and a closed bottom; a cap for closing the top of the tube; and a swab having a handle wherein one end of the swab comprises an absorbent material and the other end of the swab is attached to the inside of the cap, wherein the cap and the swab can be removed from the tube as a single unit; wherein the elongate tube further comprises a compressible indentation along the side wall, and the absorbent end of the swab can be squeezed at the position of the compressible indentation to express absorbed liquids into the bottom of the tube. A method of taking a culture sample comprising using the swab collection and recovery device.

Swab sample collection and recovery device

Immunoassays have evolved for a broad range of applications since the pioneering work of Yalow and Berson who developed the first competitive radioimmunoassay (RIA) for human insulin in 1959. Immun...

https://www.future-science.com/doi/pdf/10.2144/03354ss02

Immunoassay of infectious agents.

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Swab sample collection and recovery device

Immunoassay of infectious agents.