Recent advances in the rapid detection of microRNA with lateral flow assays

MicroRNAs (miRNA) are a kind of endogenous non-coding small molecule RNA, which are widely found in plants, animals, and viruses. miRNA can regulate the post-transcriptional cleavage of target message RNA or inhibit its translation process, and plays an important regulatory role in gene expression. Further studies have shown that miRNAs also play an important role in tumorigenesis and host-pathogen interactions. Given the important contribution of miRNAs in gene regulation and biological functions, rapid and accurate detection of miRNAs has become increasingly significant. Lateral flow assay is a detection method derived to achieve rapid detection in the field. It overcomes the problems of cumbersome, time-consuming, and high cost in traditional detection methods, and provides a good platform for accurate, sensitive, and immediate detection of target analytes. With the advantages convenient, cost-saving, and repaid result readout, the lateral flow test strips are now a recognized point-of-care testing (POCT) device and has been widely used in medical diagnosis, agriculture, food, and environmental safety. For the first time, we summarized the research progress of miRNA detection based on lateral flow methods, focusing on the strategies used in the lateral flow assays for miRNA detection and introducing some main experimental operation details, as well as providing an outlook on the future development direction of this field, aiming to provide a general guidance for colleagues preparing to conduct related research.