Functionalized Smart Nanomaterials for Point-of-Care Testing

This book highlights the recent advancement in point-of-care testing (POCT) technologies utilizing ‘smart’ nanomaterials for the analysis of biomarkers related to disease, which includes metabolites, enzymes, proteins, nucleic acids, cancer cells and multidrug-resistant pathogen. The POCT refers to medical diagnostic tests performed near the place and time of patient care. During the recent pandemic of COVID-19, many realized the importance of affordable, rapid and accurate POCT devices and their usefulness to combat the spread of the infection. The chapters in this book describe the emergence of ‘smart’ nanomaterials with unique physical and chemical properties being utilized in POCT devices for immobilizing biorecognition elements and labels for signal generation, transduction and amplification. It showcases the applications of these smart nanomaterials and their superiority in developing point-of-care diagnostics devices in a wide range of applied fields like food industry, agriculture sector, water quality assessment, pharmaceuticals and tissue engineering. It also looks into the challenges associated and future direction of research in this promising field. This book caters as reference book for researches from the field of nanobiotechnology and biomedical sciences who are interested in the development of rapid, affordable and accurate POCT devices.

Overview of the current Nano-materials, synthesis, properties and characterization.- Smart nano materials and modifications.- ‘Green’ synthesis of nanoparticles: applications for development of smart materials.- Types of transducers used for smart nano devices.- Nano materials in Lateral flow assay platforms.- Aptamer based lateral flow assay as a smart point-of care device.- Antibody, DNA and enzyme based Biosensing platform as on-site testing kit.- Crisper based POC devices for detection of opportunistic infections.- Programmable Hybrid Integrated Circuit/Microfluidic Chips as Low-Cost functionalized smart microdevices for Point-of-Care Testing.- Flow Cytometry-Based Biosensing Chip for Point-Of-Care Diagnostics.- Semiconductor-Based Biosensing Chip for bed-side testing.- Magnetic-nanosensor based diagnostic chips.- Point of Care Smart Diagnostic Devices for Rapid Detection of Viral Infection.- Nano devices for food-borne pathogen and toxin detection.- Nano materials for the rapid identification of agriculturally important plant pathogens.- Nano devices for Environmental pollutants and allergen detection.- Point-of-care devices for water quality assessment.- Nanotechnology Based Point-of-Care Diagnostics and Therapeutics for Neurological Disorders.- Functionalized smart biosensor in cell and tissue fabrication.- Challenges and future prospects.

Amit Kumar Mandal completed his M.Sc and Ph.D. from the University of North Bengal. Before joining Raiganj University as a full-time assistant professor, Amit served at Vidyasagar University as an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology under the UGC-Innovative Programme. Presently, he is the center-in-charge of the Centre for Nanotechnology Science (CeNS). He has over 10 years of research, teaching, and administrative experience and more than 70 peer-reviewed publications with three patents with a cumulative impact of nearly 333 as per Journal Citation Report, Web of Science. Dr. Mandal has been on the editorial board and the panel of reviewers of several reputed journals like Nature Portfolio, Elsevier, RSC, ACS, Frontiers Media SA, Springer Nature, and PLOS. His major research interests include Chemical Biology and Interactome. He has supervised 2 Ph.D. theses and presently guiding 3 Ph.D. students. He received MRSC from the Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom.He was declared a Top 5% highly cited author- in 2020 by the Royal Society of Chemistry.  Recently, he was awarded the top cited papers India awards-2022 by IOP Publishing’s portfolio. He received research grants from DST-SERB to undertake R&D activities.

Suvankar Ghorai (Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India, and has been trained as postdoctoral fellow at the New Jersey Medical school and University of Washington at Seattle USA on different aspects of HCV, HIV and AIDS. He have been associated with National Center for Cell Science (NCCS) Pune, as a research scientist. Before joining at the Raiganj University, he served as a research assistant professor at SRM University, Tamil Nadu, India, for more than three years. His area of research interest includes Infection Biology, especially viral infection, antiviral and low-cost point-of-care diagnostics. He received research funds from several funding agencies like, ICMR, DBT, UGC and MHR.

Azamal Husen served as Professor and Head of the Department of Biology, University of Gondar, Ethiopia and is a Foreign Delegate at Wolaita Sodo University, Wolaita, Ethiopia. Previously, he was a Visiting Faculty of the Forest Research Institute, and the Doon College of Agriculture and Forest at Dehra Dun, India. Husen’s research and teaching experience of 20 years encompasses the biogenic nanomaterial fabrication and application, plant responses to nanomaterials, plant adaptation to harsh environments at the physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels, herbal medicine, and clonal propagation for improvement of tree species. He is contributed to R&D projects of World Bank, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, etc. He is editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Plant Physiology and a series editor of Exploring Medicinal Plants (Taylor & Francis Group, United States);Plant Biology, Sustainability, and Climate Change (Elsevier, United States); and Smart Nanomaterials Technology (Springer Nature, Singapore). To his credit are >200 publications.