This review summarizes the evolution of SERS-based bacterial detection from fundamental nanomaterials to integrated clinical diagnostic platforms and reveals a research shift from maximizing electromagnetic enhancement toward overcoming matrix effects in clinical samples and ensuring robustness.
Abstract
Pathogenic bacterial infections remain a persistent global public health crisis. However, traditional clinical detection methods—such as culture-based assays and polymerase chain reaction (PCR)—are often time-consuming and labor-intensive, and they lack sufficient sensitivity for low-abundance pathogens, hindering rapid point-of-care diagnosis. With label-free, ultra-sensitive molecular fingerprinting, Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) has emerged as a powerful tool for rapid pathogen identification. This review summarizes the evolution of SERS-based bacterial detection from fundamental nanomaterials to integrated clinical diagnostic platforms. The article explores four core dimensions: functional integration and enrichment strategies of colloidal probes; structural design and multifaceted capture mechanisms of solid substrates; synergistic advantages of microfluidic systems in enabling automated “sample-to-answer” architectures; and the translational potential of SERS-based lateral flow assays (LFAs) for robust point-of-care testing (POCT). This review reveals a research shift from maximizing electromagnetic enhancement toward overcoming matrix effects in clinical samples and ensuring robustness. In synergy with microfluidics, LFAs, and AI, SERS technology is bridging the bench-to-bedside gap, offering a roadmap for next-generation decentralized, high-precision diagnostics.
Nanomaterials, with their unique physicochemical properties, have emerged as important enabling components for improving the performance of point-of-care testing (POCT) technologies for pathogen detection. Many conventional POCT methods still face challenges in sensitivity, specificity, multiplexing capability, and quantitative accuracy, particularly when applied to low-abundance pathogens in complex clinical samples. This review first summarizes the functional roles of representative nanomaterials in pathogen POCT, including optical signal output, catalytic signal amplification, target enrichment, and interfacial regulation. We then discuss how these materials improve lateral flow assays, biosensors, microfluidic systems, and isothermal nucleic acid amplification platforms. Finally, we summarize three major nanomaterial-assisted recognition mechanisms, including pathogen surface recognition, ROS-mediated signal conversion, and nucleic acid recognition, and discuss their applications in respiratory, urinary, and fecal specimens. These advances are expected to support the development of more sensitive, integrated, and field-deployable diagnostic systems for infectious disease control.
Unknown authors· Frontiers in Medicine· 0 citations
INTRODUCTION
Bacterial infections that cause acute systemic infection are the leading cause of health issues globally. Current diagnostic assays for bacterial infection include culture and nucleic acid amplification methods. However, the culture method is very time-consuming and expensive, while the nucleic acid amplification method, although it is sensitive, requires trained personnel. Aptamer-based biosensors are promising alternatives to these strategies owing to aptamers' advantages: cost-saving, no batch-to-batch variation, and high specificity and sensitivity.
AIMS
In view of their diagnostic potential, we aim to conduct a systematic review on various biosensors harnessed for the diagnosis of bacteria, which were performed using spiked and clinical samples between 2018 and 2026.
METHODS AND RESULTS
Based on the specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, the studies performed in recent years (2018-2026) were filtered from two databases, PubMed and Scopus. The inclusion criteria were aptamer-based biosensors for the detection of bacteria in spiked and clinical samples from patients with human infectious diseases. A total of 42 studies were included in this systematic review that involve aptamer-based detection of Staphylococcus aureus, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia Coli, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Acinetobacter baumanii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Salmonella typhimurium, Salmonella enterica, Helicobacter pylori, Roseburia intestinalis, Group B Streptococcus, and Haemophilus influenzae.
CONCLUSION
Aptamer-based biosensors show immense prospects for the diagnostics of pathogenic bacteria.
Nurul Farzana Ismail, Marimuthu Citartan, Nurul Asyikin Mahbud et al.· Journal of Applied Microbiol...· 0 citations
The accelerating global burden of antimicrobial resistance is driven in part by delays in accurate bacterial identification, which frequently necessitate empiric broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy. Conventional identification methods rely on culture-based workflows or centralized laboratory infrastructure, resulting in prolonged turnaround times that limit timely clinical decision-making and compromise antimicrobial stewardship. Rapid, culture-free diagnostic approaches capable of identifying bacterial pathogens are therefore urgently needed. We present a plasmonically enhanced electrochemical microfluidic system for rapid bacterial identification that integrates nucleic acid amplification with nanoscale signal amplification. Species-specific bacterial DNA is targeted using loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), while nanostructured plasmonic metasurfaces promote hot-electron generation under optical excitation, enhancing interfacial charge transfer and reaction kinetics. During amplification, proton release drives the reduction of a redox-active reporter, producing a measurable electrochemical signal that is captured using differential pulse voltammetry. Plasmonic enhancement improves sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratios, enabling robust detection even in complex biological matrices without sample pre-culture. Using this approach, bacterial identification is achieved within approximately 15 minutes of signal acquisition, with high analytical specificity. This platform demonstrates how nanoscale plasmonic–electrochemical coupling can overcome fundamental kinetic limitations in molecular diagnostics for point-of-care bacterial identification.
Roozbeh Siavash Moakhar, M. Jalali, Tamer Abdel Fatah et al.· ECS Meeting Abstracts· 0 citations
Early detection of inflammatory and infectious diseases remains a critical global health priority, particularly in the context of emerging pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, and delayed clinical diagnosis. Conventional laboratory-based assays, while accurate, often require centralized infrastructure, skilled personnel, and extended turnaround times, limiting their accessibility in point-of-care and resource-constrained settings. To address these challenges, this paper proposes the development of nanostructured electrochemical biosensors designed for rapid, sensitive, and portable detection of key inflammatory and infectious disease biomarkers. The proposed framework integrates nanostructured electrode materials - such as metal nanoparticles, carbon-based nanomaterials, and conductive polymer composites - to enhance surface area, electron transfer kinetics, and signal amplification. Functionalization with selective biorecognition elements, including antibodies, aptamers, or molecularly imprinted polymers, enables specific detection of biomarkers such as C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), interleukins, and pathogen-associated antigens. Electrochemical transduction techniques, including differential pulse voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy, are incorporated to achieve high analytical sensitivity and low detection limits.
Denis Musariri, Charity Mahwire, Thelma Chimusoro et al.· International Journal of Sci...· 0 citations
Rapid bacterial detection and timely antimicrobial susceptibility assessment are essential for effective infection management, yet remain challenging under clinically relevant low-concentration conditions. Here, we present a filtration-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) platform based on a microenvironment engineering strategy, in which plasmonic nanostructures are dynamically formed within the bacterial microenvironment. Using a gold nanostructured glass microfiber membrane, the platform enables large-volume sample processing through size-selective bacterial capture, followed by in situ gold growth that generates bacteria-centered plasmonic hotspots directly around bacterial cells. This architecture fundamentally overcomes the intrinsic hotspot-bacteria mismatch in conventional substrate-based SERS systems, enabling highly sensitive and selective detection while effectively suppressing nonspecific interference in complex biological matrices. To further address sampling limitations at low concentrations, a minimal pre-culture strategy was introduced to enhance bacterial surface occupancy, improving the detection limit from 103 to 101 CFU/mL. In addition, SERS signal intensity directly reflects bacterial viability, allowing rapid differentiation of antimicrobial responses and enabling susceptibility assessment within 2 h. By integrating physical enrichment with microenvironment-driven signal amplification, this platform simultaneously achieves low-level detection and rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing within a single system. These results highlight its potential as a next-generation integrated diagnostic platform for clinical sample analysis.
Eunji Jang, Ji Young Lee, Hoeil Chung et al.· Small Methods· 0 citations
The development of diagnostic tests that offer rapid and quantitative results can improve the health of patients, suffering from both chronic and acute diseases. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic autoimmune condition, where a patient can undergo periods of sudden flare-ups and prolonged remission. The current biomarkers of interest are either detected using central laboratory methods, or, are non-specific to IBD. In this work, we develop a series of lateral flow immunoassays for the detection of IBD biomarkers lactoferrin and myeloperoxidase, in an artificial stool matrix. By utilising surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active nanotags, we demonstrate the feasibility of these SERS-based lateral flow immunoassays for proof-of-concept singleplex and duplex detection via Raman mapping. Due to the variation in background caused by the stool matrix, we have investigated methods of assessing the SERS signal from the Raman maps, to transition the tests from giving qualitative to quantitative results. This has been achieved by extracting the SERS intensities from the maps associated with non-specific interactions, to define unique intensity thresholds for each lateral flow immunoassay, overall improving the sensitivity, reproducibility, and linearity in limit of detection studies. We achieved limits of detection of 3.2 ng mL−1 for lactoferrin and 5.0 ng mL−1 for myeloperoxidase, and limits of quantification of 18.8 ng mL−1 for lactoferrin and 8.0 ng mL−1 for myeloperoxidase. These values are well below the “normal” level of these biomarkers in stool, indicating this assay would be able to accurately monitor changing biomarker concentrations. Furthermore, we used a ratiometric approach to evaluate the maps from duplex lateral flows and detect each biomarker simultaneously on the same strip. Overall, this work demonstrates that it is possible to quantitatively detect IBD biomarkers in stool on a lateral flow with SERS, using improved Raman signal analysis methods to overcome complex sample background interference and enhance sensitivity.
Jodie Fergusson, Gregory Q. Wallace, Sian Sloan-Dennison et al.· In Analysis· 0 citations