Combating 2019-nCoV: Advanced Nanobiosensing platforms for POC global diagnostics and surveillance- CoNVaT

Photo: Bisensor image for Covid-19 and other viruses.

The COVID 19 pandemic highlights the need for rapid, accurate, and sensitive detection techniques to speed up diagnoses for early intervention. Given the clinical and social emergency, reliable diagnoses to identify the pathogen are a priority for improving patient management, infection control and more efficient epidemiological studies. In this sense, the purpose of the CoNVat project is to contribute to the early diagnosis and clinical management of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. The project will develop a biosensor that will quickly detect and quantify coronavirus (about 20 minutes), which is inexpensive, easy to use, small in size, therefore manageable, and analyzes small sample quantities at a price of around 10- € 20 analysis. The goal for this biosensor to be used in health centers and hospitals.

On the other hand, given the diversity of coronaviruses in the natural reservoirs and the potential of some of them to be zoonotic, the project will expand detection to all types of alpha and betaCoV. This aspect is essential in preventing new epidemics, as in the case of a new CoV epidemic an apparatus will be available for rapid and cheap diagnostics. It will also enable rapid, thorough and low-cost sampling of VOC reservoir animal species. The project is coordinated by the team of Dra. Laura Lechuga of the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of Catalonia. The University of Barcelona (IRBIO) team led by Jordi Serra Cobo will provide biological samples with coronaviruses obtained from wild species that are potentially reservoirs of CoV. Once the aforementioned samples have been obtained, the UB team will validate the analyzes performed with the biosensor. Also participating in the project are the Université d'Aix Marseille and the Instituto Nazionale for le Malattie Infettive Lazzaro Spallanzani in Rome.