Carbon nanotube-based thin-film resistive sensor for point-of-care screening of tuberculosis

For point-of-care diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB), current TB diagnostic approaches need to be further improved for achieving an accurate diagnosis that is rapid and low-cost. This paper presents an immuno-resistive sensor on a plastic film for inexpensive, simple TB screening. The sensor is composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) functionalized with polyclonal antibodies raised against the MPT64 surface antigen from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). The target analyte of either MTB or MPT64 is spiked in tongue swab and sputum samples. Under optimized conditions, targets are directly detected from tongue swab samples by resistive measurement. Target analytes spiked into human sputa are enriched with a magnetic bead protocol followed by resistive detection. This highly sensitive film sensor will facilitate rapid TB screening with the added benefits of a small form factor, simple operation, low power requirement, and low cost.