Cost-effective and sensitive colorimetric immunosensing using an iron oxide-to-Prussian blue nanoparticle conversion strategy

Analyst. 2016 Jun 21;141(12):3883-9. doi: 10.1039/c6an00254d. Epub 2016 May 3.

Abstract

The development of new sensitive, cost-effective and user-friendly colorimetric bioassays is in increasing demand to meet the requirement of modern clinical diagnostics and field detection. Herein, a novel iron oxide-to-Prussian blue (PB) nanoparticle (NP) conversion strategy was developed and applied to sensitive colorimetric immunosensing of cancer biomarkers. In a typical sandwich-type immunosensing system, the captured spherical antibody-conjugated iron oxide NPs were transformed into cubic PB NPs, which exhibited a highly visible blue color with high molar extinction coefficients. Hence, a new colorimetric immunosensing strategy was developed as a result of this low cost and simple transformation process. Without the aid of any complex nanoparticle stabilizing ligands and signal amplification processes, prostate-specific antigen as a model analyte can be detected at a concentration as low as 1.0 ng mL(-1) by the naked eye with good reliability for detection of real human serum samples. This is the first attempt to develop and apply the iron oxide-to-PB NP colorimetric conversion strategy for immunosensing, and shows great promise for the development of new sensitive, cost-effective and user-friendly colorimetric bioassays in various bioanalytical applications, especially in low-resource settings.

MeSH terms

  • Colorimetry*
  • Ferric Compounds / chemistry*
  • Ferrocyanides / chemistry*
  • Gold
  • Humans
  • Immunoassay*
  • Male
  • Nanoparticles*
  • Prostate-Specific Antigen / blood
  • Reproducibility of Results

Substances

  • Ferric Compounds
  • Ferrocyanides
  • ferric oxide
  • Gold
  • Prostate-Specific Antigen
  • ferric ferrocyanide