Development of integrated microfluidic platform rapid test kit for fast detection of influenza A

The recent increases in influenza A cases in Malaysia have raised public concern due to the ability of the virus to cause respiratory infections. There are several diagnostic methods available to detect the influenza A virus such as reverse transcript-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDTS). However, these methods are time consuming and expensive. Moreover, other available fast diagnostic method can be less accurate and thus, resulting to false negatives. Therefore, a rapid test kit (RTK) with high accuracy and sensitivity for the detection of influenza A is highly required. In this study, a simple test kit for the detection of influenza A is proposed by using surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) technique integrated with microfluidic devices containing microchannels. The detector will be prepared from material functionalized with a composite of silver (Ag)-doped carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nitride (CN). The use of CNTs material to capture the viruses obtained from various biological fluids, such as saliva and nasal samples can be an effective method to produce result with high sensitivity. The detection and sensing of the influenza A virus will be based on their Raman Signature. The SERS technique used in this study to detect the presence of virus will be enhanced by the Raman effect that provided by plasmonic material (Ag) when it doped with the composite (CNT-CN). Due to the intertubular distance of CNTs that matches with the size of the virus, it can be used to trap and concentrate the virus at the detector. Hence, these properties allow for the detection of the virus at low concentration level. Provided that the device is successfully developed and proven to reliably detect the virus, this proposed RTK could be a important diagnostic tool to prevent another major pandemic.