Home-used coronavirus sensors powered by isothermal amplification

Abstract

The global pandemic caused by coronaviruses, particularly SARS-CoV-2, has highlighted the urgent need for biosensing platforms that enable early and self-administered viral detection. Home-used biosensors enable rapid, accurate, and highly sensitive detection in home settings, reducing the probability of cross-infection while circumventing the temporal, financial, and operational constraints of conventional hospital-based workflows. However, they face limitations in sensitivity. Isothermal nucleic acid amplification strategies under constant or ambient temperature conditions present a transformative solution, leveraging mild reaction conditions and operational simplicity to advance household-compatible diagnostics. In recent years, a variety of innovative at-home sensors with advanced performance have been developed based on different isothermal amplification strategies, including loop-mediated isothermal amplification, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, hybridization chain reaction, catalytic hairpin assembly, entropy-driven circuit and so on. Mainly taking the novel coronavirus as an example, this review systematically summarized the latest progress in the construction and application of household coronavirus sensors from three aspects: the targets of detection, the signal amplification strategies, and the biosensing platforms (fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, surface plasmon resonance, colorimetry, and electrochemistry), as well as emphasized their advantages and challenges. We further delineate persistent challenges and future trajectories for enhancing the accessibility, accuracy, and multiplexing capacity of decentralized diagnostic platforms.