Perspectives in Aptasensor-Based Portable Detection for Biotoxins

Biotoxins are pervasive in food and the environment, posing significant risk to human health. The most effective strategy to mitigate the risk arising from biotoxin exposure is through their specific and sensitive detection. Aptasensors have emerged as pivotal tools, leveraging aptamers as biorecognition elements to transduce the specificity of aptamer-target interactions into quantifiable signals for analytical applications, thereby facilitating the meticulous detection of biotoxins. When integrated with readily portable devices such as lateral flow assays (LFAs), personal glucose meters (PGMs), smartphones, and various meters measuring parameters like pH and pressure, aptasensors have significantly advanced the field of biotoxin monitoring. These commercially available devices enable precise, in situ, and real-time analysis, offering great potential for portable biotoxin detection in food and environmental matrices. This review highlights the recent progress in biotoxin monitoring using portable aptasensors, discussing both their potential applications and the challenges encountered. By addressing these impediments, we anticipate that a portable aptasensor-based detection system will open new avenues in biotoxin monitoring in the future.