Aptamer-Based Lateral Flow Assay as a Smart Point-of-Care Devices

Point-of-care (POC) devices have become more crucial in recent years. POC provides easy, quick, and low-cost on-site diagnostics and detection without the need of any complex tool or well-trained person. One of the common POC devices is lateral flow assay (LFA). LFA is a paper-based technique that contains different compartments that can detect the target of interest in a sample rapidly. Aptamer-based LFA is currently developing further due to its advantages compared to other types of LFA. For instance, it has the potential to replace antibody-based LFA because of its disadvantages. Moreover, two different major formats of Aptamer-based LFA are sandwich and competitive. The result that they give is interpreted in a different way. Herein, we will discuss aptamer-based LFA as smart POC devices, its difference between antibody-based LFA, development of aptamers for it, its different compartments and formats, interpretation of its results, and lastly its applications in diagnostics and other application areas.