Recently, Assistant Professor Conghui Liu and Associate Professor Yizhen Liu from the College of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Shenzhen University, together with Dr. Yan Huang from University of Science and Technology Beijing, published a research paper titled "CRISPR/Cas13a-driven lateral flow assay for preamplification-free and ultrasensitive miRNA-21 detection" in the journal "Biosensors and Bioelectronics" (Impact Factor 10.7). Master's students Yan Zhu and Junwei Lai from the College of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Shenzhen University are co-first authors, with Shenzhen University as the first authoring unit.

Developing a preamplification-free and sensitive clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-based method is significant but still extremely challenging for microRNA (miRNA) detection. Here, we present a combination of a CRISPR/Cas13a-based reaction with a lateral flow biosensor, which enables the quantitative and colorimetric readout of preamplification-free miRNA detection at room temperature. In this work, the reaction principle and the structure of the lateral flow strip are well-designed to achieve surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)/colorimetric dual-signal “turn-on” response of target miRNA. The CRISPR/ Cas13a Reporter is engineered with a DNA-RNA splicing structure to generate DNA cleavage products and reduce nonspecific collateral cleavage. Without the need for nucleic acid preamplification strategy, the developed CRISPR/Cas13a-driven lateral flow biosensor enables the microRNA-21 (miR-21) detection at room temperature with a readout time of 10 min and a total process time of less than 45 min, achieving an impressive limit of detection of 8.96 aM by SERS and 1 fM by visualization, respectively. Moreover, the platform demonstrated excellent recovery rates in spiked human serum samples. The proposed CRISPR/Cas13a-driven, dual-signal “turn-on”-responded lateral flow platform has the potential to simultaneously meet the requirements of convenient point-of-care visualization detection and more accurate and sensitive SERS detection of miR-21, offering a cost-effective, rapid, and reliable tool for early cancer diagnosis.

Paper Link：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2025.117850