Rethinking Aptamers as Nanotheranostic Tools for SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19 Infection

The novel coronavirus named by WHO and Coronavirus Study Group (CSG) as SARS-COV-2 is the etiological agent of the newly emerged Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). COVID-19 has become a pandemic threat as the WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern. Early and precise detection of the virus is important for effective diagnosis and treatment. Various testing kits and assays, including real-time reverse Transcriptase PCR, thermal screening guns, ELISA-based immunoassays, and Point-of-Care (POC), have been implemented or are being explored to detect the virus and/or characterise cellular and antibody responses to the infection. However, these approaches have inherent limitations such as non-specificity, high cost, characterize by long turnaround times for test results, and can be labour intensive. Aptamers, which are single-stranded oligonucleotides, generated artificially by SELEX (Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) may offer the capacity to generate high affinity bioprobes for monitoring relevant SARS-COV 2 and COVID-19 biomarkers. This article discusses the prospects of implementing aptasensing technologies for rapid point-of-care detection of SARS-COV-2.