A research team from the Department of Applied Physics of PolyU has successfully developed an ultrasensitive and portable COVID-19 antibody detection sensor. Present at the press conference were Professor Feng YAN (left), Professor of the Department of Applied Physics, PolyU; and Dr Helen LAW (right), Associate Professor of the Department of Health Technology and Informatics, PolyU.
Fast and easy-to-use, the sensor is designed for testing the antibody levels of people who have either received vaccination or have been infected with the virus.
The COVID-19 antibody detection sensor developed by the PolyU research team comes with an array of advantages – it is highly sensitive, portable, rapid, easy-to-use and low-cost.
A research team from the Department of Applied Physics at PolyU has successfully developed an ultrasensitive and portable COVID-19 antibody detection sensor based on organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) technology. Fast and easy-to-use, the sensor is designed for testing the antibody levels of people who have either received vaccination or have been infected with the virus.
The whole detection process, which uses saliva sample instead of only blood, takes less than six minutes and the cost per test is only about HK$10. The antibody detection sensor can test the concentration of antibodies from lower than 10fM to higher than 100nM. The detection limit satisfies the needs of exquisite analytical sensitivity for saliva.
Principal Investigator of the study, Professor Feng Yan, Professor of the Department of Applied Physics at PolyU, said that since the detection process is non-invasive, self-sampling is highly possible. Moreover, the operation and result reading are very simple with the use of a smartphone, and hence the sensor is suitable for instant detection and large-scale screening scenarios.
The next plan of the research team is to apply for funding for clinical studies in collaboration with different medical and testing institutions. They expect that the novel device can be commercialised as soon as practicable and applied for antibody detection of other viruses.
Press release
理大研發超靈敏便攜式新冠病毒抗體檢測儀 具備快速、操作簡易及低成本的優點 (Chinese)
