Biocatalytic Fluorescence Switch-On Polymerizations for Signal Amplification in Ultrasensitive Diagnostics and Biosensing of Malaria

Malaria is one of the most catastrophic infectious diseases, causing nearly 250 million deaths in 2021, according to WHO. Although malaria is curable, delayed diagnosis is the leading cause of death in malaria patients.

The major obstacle in malaria diagnosis is clinical assessment by conventional methods, which requires well-trained clinicians and expensive equipment. Moreover, point-of-care diagnostic tests are not sensitive enough to accurately detect low levels of parasitemia.

Thus, there is an urgent need for a rapid, accurate, and highly sensitive malaria diagnostic method based on the detection of parasite biomarkers in the bloodstream and amplification of weak parasite signals by novel methods.In recent years, atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), a controlled radical polymerization, has been studied as an attractive method for signal amplification in biosensing because the chain reaction accumulates monomers in the form of polymers at the site of polymerization.

In addition, clinically relevant metalloproteins have been detected using this polymer-based signal amplification technique.Herein, the aim of this work is to develop biocatalytic fluorescent switch-on polymerizations with a triple signal amplification strategy for ultrasensitive diagnostics and biosensing of malaria.

The polymerizations will be used in assays for malaria diagnosis based on hemozoin (metabolic byproduct of all Plasmodium species) and in immunoassays that involve antibody-peroxidase conjugates (lateral flow immunoassay, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and immunofluorescence staining) for low abundance malaria antigens.

The diagnostic platform will be a collective combination and use of multiple independent technologies in a unique design to detect realistic and feasible Malaria biomarkers found in peripheral blood.