Recent advancements in structural improvements of lateral flow assays towards point-of-care testing

Lateral flow assays (LFAs) provide some of the most attractive point-of-care instruments for broad applications with simple, rapid, user-friendly, and cost-effective characteristics. However, these technologies suffer from low sensitivity, the poor limit of detection, and just qualitative or semi-quantitative results that restrict their practical applications. Extensive research has been reported in this area involving sensitivity enhancement, multiplex analysis, the implementation for broad analytes, and development of novel electronic readers for quantitative analysis. This review presents recently reported works for the structural improvements of LFAs considering antibody immobilization, manipulation of the membrane, structural variants of LFAs, and single and dual detection mode LFAs, all these aspects focused on the visual, fluorescent, magnetic, surface-enhanced Raman scattering, electrochemical, and nanozyme-based detection. Schematics of structural improvements of lateral flow assays. • Various formats of lateral flow assays (LFAs) are illustrated. • The efficient immobilization of antibodies on nanotags and test line is described. • The improvements in membrane performance are elucidated. • The variations in T and C lines to detect various analytes are presented. • Different electronic readers for quantification of LFAs outputs are highlighted.