With
the ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),
there is an increasing quest for more accessible, easy-to-use, rapid,
inexpensive, and high-accuracy diagnostic tools. Traditional disease
diagnostic methods such as qRT-PCR (quantitative reverse transcription-PCR)
and ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) require multiple steps,
trained technicians, and long turnaround time that may worsen the
disease surveillance and pandemic control. In sight of this situation,
a rapid, one-step, easy-to-use, and high-accuracy diagnostic platform
will be valuable for future epidemic control, especially for regions
with scarce medical resources. Herein, we report a magnetic particle
spectroscopy (MPS) platform for the detection of severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) biomarkers: spike and nucleocapsid
proteins. This technique monitors the dynamic magnetic responses of
magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and uses their higher harmonics as a
measure of the nanoparticles’ binding states. By anchoring
polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) onto MNP surfaces, these nanoparticles
function as nanoprobes to specifically bind to target analytes (SARS-CoV-2
spike and nucleocapsid proteins in this work) and form nanoparticle
clusters. This binding event causes detectable changes in higher harmonics
and allows for quantitative and qualitative detection of target analytes
in the liquid phase. We have achieved detection limits of 1.56 nM
(equivalent to 125 fmole) and 12.5 nM (equivalent to 1 pmole) for
detecting SARS-CoV-2 spike and nucleocapsid proteins, respectively.
This MPS platform combined with the one-step, wash-free, nanoparticle
clustering-based assay method is intrinsically versatile and allows
for the detection of a variety of other disease biomarkers by simply
changing the surface functional groups on MNPs.