A fiber optic–nanophotonic approach to the detection of antibodies and viral particles of COVID-19

Dr Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, told NBC News on "Meet the Press"that "[T]he U S needs a 'breakthrough' in coronavirus testing to help screen Americans and get a more accurate picture of the virus' spread "We have been involved with biopathogen detection since the 2001 anthrax attacks and were the first to detect anthrax in real-time A variation on the laser spectroscopic techniques we developed for the rapid detection of anthrax can be applied to detect the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2 virus) In addition to detecting a single virus, this technique allows us to read its surface protein structure In particular, we have been conducting research based on a variety of quantum optical approaches aimed at improving our ability to detect Corona Virus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) viral infection Indeed, the detection of a small concentration of antibodies, after an infection has passed, is a challenging problem Likewise, the early detection of disease, even before a detectible antibody population has been established, is very important Our team is researching both aspects of this problem The paper is written to stimulate the interest of both physical and biological scientists in this important problem It is thus written as a combination of tutorial (review) and future work (preview) We join Prof Federico Capasso and Editor Dennis Couwenberg in expressing our appreciation to all those working so heroically on all aspects of the COVID-19 problem And we thank Drs Capasso and Couwenberg for their invitation to write this paper © 2020 Navid Rajil et al , published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2020