Highly sensitive and selective surface plasmon resonance biosensor for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 protein

The reality that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still raging around the world and making a comeback with a strong presence has highlighted the need for rapid and sensitive quantitative detection methods of viral RNA, antibody and antigen for widespread tracking and screening applications. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) detection technology has achieved rapid development and become a standard measurement method in the fields of biosensing, biomedicine, biochemistry and biopharmaceuticals due to its advantages of high sensitivity, fast response and no need for labelling. Here, we report a sandwiched structure-based SPR biosensor for detecting a specific viral antigen, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike S1 protein. The sensor combines a Ti₃C₂-MXene nanosheet modified sensing platform and polydopamine (PDA)-Ag nanoparticle (AgNP)/anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 protein nanoconjugate signal enhancers, exhibiting a wide linear range of 0.0001 to 1000 ng mL^-1 with a low detection limit of 12 fg mL^-1 (S/N = 3). In the analysis of artificial saliva and human serum samples, the proposed SPR biosensor exhibits good reproducibility and high specificity, which indicates its potential for application in complex bodily fluids. The exploitation of the MXene-based SPR biochip for recognizing the SARS-CoV-2 antigen provides an accessible and rapid way for COVID-19 diagnosis, and promotes the application of 2D nanomaterial-based sensing chips in clinical diagnosis and disease screening. Significantly, the proposed method possesses general applicability that can be reprogrammed to detect any protein antigen if a corresponding specific nanobody is available.