Integration of a new generation of immunochromatographic assays: Recent advances and future trends

Rapid and sensitive detection of hazards in clinical, food, and environmental samples is of great importance in the field of public health. Immunochromatographic assay (ICA), as a rapid diagnostics platform, is currently the most attractive point-of-care sensor due to its rapidness, user-friendly, and low-cost. Although, a variety of "headto-toe" improvement strategies have sprung up to provide ICA with superior analytical performance in recent years, their respective strengths and weaknesses are difficult to interconnect and integrate, hampering their widespread deployment in ensuring public health. In this review, the momentous strategies to address the inherent limitations of ICA covering increasing sensitivity, enabling quantitative detection of analytes, and multiplexing are presented. Particularly, significant attention is focused on synergistically breaking the bottleneck of practical feasibility of ICA. Furthermore, the unique superiority and latest applications in clinical diagnosis, food safety, and environmental monitoring, as well as perspectives in the development process of the new generation of ICA are also elaborated. Eventually, the main challenges and future-oriented innovations in this field have also received attention with the profound development of the new generation of ICA in public health.