Gold aggregating gold: A novel nanoparticle biosensor approach for the direct quantification of hepatitis C virus RNA in clinical samples

摘要

The affordable and reliable detection of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) RNA is a cornerstone in the management andudcontrol of infection, affecting approximately 3% of the global population. However, the existing technologies areudexpensive, labor intensive and time consuming, posing significant limitations to their wide-scale exploitation,udparticularly in economically deprived populations. Here, we utilized the unique optical and physicochemicaludproperties of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to develop a novel assay platform shown to be rapid and robust inudsensing and quantifying unamplified HCV RNA in clinical samples. The assay is based on inducing aggregationudof citrate AuNPs decorated with a specific nucleic acid probe. Two types of cationic AuNPs, cysteamine andudCTAB capped, were compared to achieve maximum assay performance. The technology is simple, rapid, costudeffective and quantitative with 93.3% sensitivity, high specificity and detection limit of 4.57 IU/µl. Finally, ouruddata suggest that RNA folding impact the aggregation behavior of the functionalized AuNPs, with broaderudapplications in other nucleic acid detection technologies.