Monitoring Intact Viruses Using Aptamers

Viral diagnosis and surveillance are necessary steps in containing the spread of viral diseases, and they help in the deployment of appropriate therapeutic interventions. In the past, the commonly employed viral detection methods were either cell-culture or molecule-level assays. Most of these assays are laborious and expensive, require special facilities, and provide a slow diagnosis. To circumvent these limitations, biosensor-based approaches are becoming attractive, especially after the successful commercialization of glucose and other biosensors. In the present article, I have reviewed the current progress using the biosensor approach for detecting intact viruses. At the time of writing this review, three types of bioreceptor surfaces (antibody-, glycan-, and aptamer-based) have been explored on different sensing platforms for detecting intact viruses. Among these bioreceptors, aptamer-based sensors have been increasingly explored for detecting intact viruses using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and other platforms. Special emphasis is placed on the aptamer-based SPR platform in the present review.