Theoretical seminar | 09 February 2022

The huge number of new cases of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infections daily puts a heavy burden on the healthcare system. Therefore, there is a need to develop fast-response and highly sensitive methods for virus detection. Thus, the development of biosensors that could be used not only in laboratory conditions but also for on-site testing with high accuracy has become an extremely important task in medicine. In this study, we present a method based on a highly sensitive technique, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) performed on a substrate with silver inclusions. Silver inclusions have been used as SERS nanotags because they provide excellent response. SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid phosphoprotein was used as an antigen and rabbit IgG antigens were used as analytes. SERS and FTIR were performed to characterize this pair of analytes. Significant advantages of this assay over standard methods such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) were revealed, including higher sensitivity and reproducibility, minimal sample preparation, simplicity, and fast action. Thus, the proposed SERS-based method can be implemented as a highly efficient tool for quantitative monitoring of biomolecules in the human body even at the smallest concentrations.