Bioprobe-conjugate polymeric micro/nanoparticles as detection tools for infectious diseases

Abstract Infectious diseases contribute to various globally important illnesses that kill millions of people each year. They can communicate among populations, thus threatening the public health and potentially economy. Due to these serious effects, World Health Organization (WHO) has moved forward to control and prevent the spread of infectious diseases by encouraging the development of diagnostic tests that are affordable, sensitive, and highly specific to the targeted microbes. This chapter shines a spotlight on how to implement polymeric micro/nanoparticles in the development of innovative tools to meet this global challenge. The important infectious diseases include malaria, diarrhea, and acquired immune deficiency syndrome which are continuously monitored by WHO have been focused. Recent development in different levels of detection approaches from simple procedure including latex agglutination test and rapid diagnostic test (self-testing) to more complicated techniques such as polymerase chain reaction, electrochemical technique, fluorescent technique, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy have been described. Accommodation of polymeric micro/nanoparticles in those systems could help improve sensitivity and specificity as well as reduce turnaround times and the number of steps. In addition, multiplex technology for simultaneous detection of several target molecules using various kinds of bioprobe-conjugated particles is also mentioned which allows minimizing cost, time, and sample volume per test.