Advantages of imprinted polymer electrodes for electrochemical pathogen detection

Rapid, reliable, and cost-effective pathogen detection sensors are reshaping modern biomedical devices to a competent form for health care applications. Current approaches rely on microscopy, spectroscopy, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and electrochemistry. The latter is an intriguing way of using electricity to drive a (bio)chemical reaction, the electronic read-out of which informs on the state of infection. Specifically, a recent electrochemical platform for pathogenic detection utilizes imprinted electrodes to detect species with high specificity based on their spatial 3D “fingerprint.” In this mini-review, we describe different compositions and techniques for fabricating imprinted electrodes that target various species of bacteria and viruses. We elaborate on the possible electrochemical pathogen detection methods, compare their performance with non-electrochemical methods, and emphasize the benefit of coupling electrochemistry with other established techniques. As a showcase, we contrast the ability of electrochemical DNA biosensors and imprinted electrodes to detect Zika and SARS-CoV-2 virus.