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Biosensors
Special Issues
Point-of-Care Testing: Advances and Perspectives
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Point-of-Care Testing: Advances and Perspectives

A special issue of Biosensors (ISSN 2079-6374). This special issue belongs to the section "Biosensors and Healthcare".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2026 | Viewed by 4273

Editors

Dr. Hui Chen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Analytical Chemistry Division, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
Interests: point of care testing; smart molecular switch; microfluidics; biomimicking sensors; molecular imaging; chemical education; quantum enhanced biosensing; machine learning
Dr. Sheng Feng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Pathology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
Interests: clinical chemistry; clinical diagnostics; biomarkers; mass spectrometry; point of care testing
Dr. Sungwan Kim

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Division of Engineering in Medicine, Division of Renal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02139, USA
Interests: point-of-care diagnostic; biosensor; immunoassay; infectious diseases; supramolecular chemistry; organic synthesis; bioconjugation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress in point-of-care testing (POCT) technologies, significantly advancing healthcare by enabling more patient-centered care, reducing turnaround times, and improving clinical decision-making processes. POCT enables accessible, portable, rapid, and cost-effective diagnostics directly at the site of patient care. It has increasingly been employed across various fields, particularly essential in settings requiring rapid diagnostics, including infectious disease management, chronic disease monitoring, emergency care, and remote healthcare delivery.

This Special Issue, "Point-of-Care Testing: Advances and Perspectives", seeks original research articles and comprehensive reviews highlighting innovations and emerging developments in POCT. We invite contributions exploring innovations toward POCT applications, including but not limited to biosensors, microfluidic devices, multiplexing techniques, quantum sensing technologies, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled POCT systems. We are particularly interested in research addressing the critical challenges identified for POCT devices, including ease-of-use, portability, robustness, minimal reagent requirements, cost-effectiveness, and integration with telemedicine and healthcare informatics systems. Additionally, this Special Issue seeks articles exploring the application of AI and machine learning algorithms to enhance diagnostic precision, automate data interpretation, and improve the reliability of POCT outcomes. We also welcome cutting-edge research exploring quantum sensing technologies, such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds, especially their integration into portable and wearable diagnostic systems. Articles investigating clinical validation and economic assessments of emerging POCT platforms are also encouraged.

We look forward to your valuable contributions and insightful reviews to further enrich this rapidly evolving and impactful field of POCT.

Dr. Hui Chen
Dr. Sheng Feng
Dr. Sungwan Kim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biosensors is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • point-of-care testing
  • microfluidics
  • lab-on-a-chip
  • molecular diagnostics
  • multiplex assays
  • infectious diseases
  • smart molecular switch
  • biosensors
  • telemedicine
  • clinical validation
  • artificial intelligence
  • machine learning
  • quantum sensing
  • quantum biosensors

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Review

51 pages, 4358 KB  
Review
Paper-Based Biosensors for Monitoring Binding, Blocking, and Surrogate Neutralizing Antibody Responses Against Viral Infections
by Yiren Yin, Yujie Yi, Yazheng Yu, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Khrustaleva, Linlin Zhai, Jianhai Yu, Wei Zhao and Chenguang Shen
Biosensors 2026, 16(8), 420; https://doi.org/10.3390/bios16080420 - 4 Aug 2026
Viewed by 364
Abstract
Virus-specific antibody responses, including binding antibodies and neutralizing antibodies (nAbs), are important indicators of antiviral immune status after infection or immunization. They provide complementary information on antiviral humoral immunity after infection or vaccination. Antigen-binding antibodies indicate previous exposure and the magnitude of the [...] Read more.
Virus-specific antibody responses, including binding antibodies and neutralizing antibodies (nAbs), are important indicators of antiviral immune status after infection or immunization. They provide complementary information on antiviral humoral immunity after infection or vaccination. Antigen-binding antibodies indicate previous exposure and the magnitude of the immune response, whereas receptor-blocking and functional neutralization assays assess whether antibodies interfere with viral entry or infection. Conventional neutralization assays, such as plaque reduction neutralization tests and pseudovirus neutralization tests, provide functional information but are labor-intensive, time-consuming, biosafety-restricted, and difficult to deploy for large-scale or decentralized monitoring. Paper-based biosensors, including lateral flow assays (LFAs), microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs), and paper-based ELISA, have emerged as promising point-of-care tools owing to their low cost, portability, simple operation, and compatibility with visual or digital readouts. This review critically evaluates these platforms according to whether they measure antigen-binding antibodies, receptor-blocking activity, surrogate neutralization, or functional neutralization and summarizes the applications of these three platforms for monitoring antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2, influenza, dengue, Zika, and monkeypox viruses. Unlike previous reviews that mainly focus on general paper-based biosensor design or conventional nAb assays, this review emphasizes the distinction between antigen-binding, receptor-blocking, and surrogate neutralization readouts, and critically discusses how paper-based signals should be interpreted in relation to functional immunity. We further analyze key translational challenges, including quantitative accuracy, antigen cross-reactivity, standardization, clinical validation, regulatory positioning, and real-world implementation. Future development should combine multiplex detection, standardized calibration, digital and AI-assisted interpretation, and clinically validated assay formats. Paper-based biosensors have considerable potential for decentralized antibody monitoring and public health surveillance, but their clinical utility depends on clear assay positioning and validation against appropriate functional or reference methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Point-of-Care Testing: Advances and Perspectives)
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17 pages, 2088 KB  
Review
Rolling Circle Amplification as a Molecular Tool for Spatially Resolved Signal Amplification in Single Molecule Counting Assay
by Juhwan Park
Biosensors 2025, 15(9), 628; https://doi.org/10.3390/bios15090628 - 21 Sep 2025
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3206
Abstract
There have been rising interests in ultra-sensitive biosensing technologies for early diagnosis and prognosis monitoring of infectious diseases, cancers, and neurodegenerative diseases. Digital signal readout strategy represented by digital ELISA or digital PCR, advanced biosensing field enormously, which enables detection of biomolecules under [...] Read more.
There have been rising interests in ultra-sensitive biosensing technologies for early diagnosis and prognosis monitoring of infectious diseases, cancers, and neurodegenerative diseases. Digital signal readout strategy represented by digital ELISA or digital PCR, advanced biosensing field enormously, which enables detection of biomolecules under the detection limit of conventional biosensing methods. However, due to the need for compartmentalization and limited multiplex capability, it has been hurdled for utilization in applications requiring hierarchical resolution analysis such as sub-cellular molecules or molecular cargo of single cells or single extracellular vesicles (EVs). Rolling circle amplification (RCA), an isothermal DNA amplification method enabling localization of an amplified signal, can eliminate the need for compartmentalization and increase multiplex capability. It also has potential to expand applications of single molecule counting assay for understanding hierarchy of biological systems. In this review, recent advances in RCA-based single molecule counting assay are overviewed and their applications in single cells and single EVs quantitative analysis are discussed. Furthermore, the limitations and outlook of RCA-based single molecule counting assay are highlighted. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Point-of-Care Testing: Advances and Perspectives)
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