Chapter 8
Aptamers for the Diagnosis of Infectious
Diseases
Ting Zhang, Yunhao Lu, Sha Deng, and Ruijie Deng
Abstract Nowadays, infectious diseases have been considered as life-threatening
concerns worldwide. Traditional methods based on clinical features and epidemiological information have been successfully applied in infection diagnosis. However,
these methods are either relatively complicated or time-consuming. Aptamer, a
specific DNA/RNA binder, can serve as field-deployable sensors (termed aptasensors), and is thus highly promising to construct point-of-use tools for infection diagnosis. In this chapter, we will present the basic features of most prevalent infectious
diseases and the efforts to obtain aptamers against their pathogen counterparts. Then,
we will discuss the design strategies and working principles of typical aptasensors, nanomaterial-involved aptasensors, and microfluidics-integrated aptasensors
for typical infectious diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, anthrax, malaria, viral
hepatitis, AIDS and COVID-19, as well as their application for infectious diseases
profiling and cellular monitoring. It can be anticipated that aptamers will play a
pivotal role in the future development of advanced diagnostic techniques of intricate
infectious diseases.
Keywords Aptamers · Infectious diseases · COVID-19 · SARS-CoV-2 · Bacterial
infectious diseases · Viral infectious diseases
8.1 Introduction
Infectious diseases are disorders caused by organisms—such as bacteria, viruses,
fungi or parasites [1]. There are assorted organisms living in and on our bodies; most
of them are normally harmless or even helpful. But under certain conditions, some
organisms may cause infections. Infectious diseases consist of three key points: the
infectious source, transmission path and susceptible population. Once such diseases
outbreak, they will spread at very quick speed. Consequently, they are regarded as
global severe health threat [2, 3]. Typical infectious diseases such as cholera, anthrax,
T. Zhang · Y. Lu · S. Deng · R. Deng (B)
College of Biomass Science and Engineering, Healthy Food Evaluation Research Center,
Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
e-mail: drj17@scu.edu.cn
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
Y. Dong (ed.), Aptamers for Medical Applications,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4838-7_8
207
Aptamers for the Diagnosis of Infectious
Diseases
Ting Zhang, Yunhao Lu, Sha Deng, and Ruijie Deng
Abstract Nowadays, infectious diseases have been considered as life-threatening
concerns worldwide. Traditional methods based on clinical features and epidemiological information have been successfully applied in infection diagnosis. However,
these methods are either relatively complicated or time-consuming. Aptamer, a
specific DNA/RNA binder, can serve as field-deployable sensors (termed aptasensors), and is thus highly promising to construct point-of-use tools for infection diagnosis. In this chapter, we will present the basic features of most prevalent infectious
diseases and the efforts to obtain aptamers against their pathogen counterparts. Then,
we will discuss the design strategies and working principles of typical aptasensors, nanomaterial-involved aptasensors, and microfluidics-integrated aptasensors
for typical infectious diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, anthrax, malaria, viral
hepatitis, AIDS and COVID-19, as well as their application for infectious diseases
profiling and cellular monitoring. It can be anticipated that aptamers will play a
pivotal role in the future development of advanced diagnostic techniques of intricate
infectious diseases.
Keywords Aptamers · Infectious diseases · COVID-19 · SARS-CoV-2 · Bacterial
infectious diseases · Viral infectious diseases
8.1 Introduction
Infectious diseases are disorders caused by organisms—such as bacteria, viruses,
fungi or parasites [1]. There are assorted organisms living in and on our bodies; most
of them are normally harmless or even helpful. But under certain conditions, some
organisms may cause infections. Infectious diseases consist of three key points: the
infectious source, transmission path and susceptible population. Once such diseases
outbreak, they will spread at very quick speed. Consequently, they are regarded as
global severe health threat [2, 3]. Typical infectious diseases such as cholera, anthrax,
T. Zhang · Y. Lu · S. Deng · R. Deng (B)
College of Biomass Science and Engineering, Healthy Food Evaluation Research Center,
Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
e-mail: drj17@scu.edu.cn
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
Y. Dong (ed.), Aptamers for Medical Applications,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4838-7_8
207