Wastewater surveillance testing is an emerging epidemiological tool to monitor municipal sewage for traces of infectious pathogens in entire communities. Due to the rapid degradation of viruses, proper pretreatment and continuous cold storage of wastewater samples are required to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the testing results. Thus, the sample storage system for large-scale surveillance testing may need an extraordinarily high cost to implement. In this study, we develop enhanced porous superabsorbent polymer (PSAP) beads to stabilize and preserve enveloped viruses in municipal wastewater. By applying the PSAP beads to treat wastewater samples, the viral species are effectively captured and encapsulated inside the beads while undesired large components are excluded and removed. We have demonstrated that the PSAP beads could effectively mitigate thermal-induced damages on the model enveloped virus and successfully achieve excellent room-temperature storage performance. Both the infectivity level and genome abundance of the viruses are preserved even in the complex wastewater matrix. Therefore, the enhanced PSAP beads provide a low-cost and efficient sample pretreatment and storage method that is feasible and practical for large-scale surveillance of viral pathogens in water samples. This technique also promotes flexibility of virus detection in both location and time, enabling the remote collection of water samples from distributed regions and on-demand testing in centralized facilities.

Enhanced porous superabsorbent polymer (PSAP) beads for encapsulation and stabilization of enveloped viruses in municipal wastewater

ACS Spring 2022

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