Quantitative immunodiagnosis is one of the most commonly used methods for in vitro diagnostics. Various bioanalytical methods have been developed to quantitatively diagnose immune analytes; however, they require blood dilution pretreatment, reaction mixing, complicated experimental steps, and can cause diagnostic errors due to the hook effect. To address this issue, we introduced a simple immunoassay based on carbon nanoparticles (CNPs). The assay was designed to have high flexibility for use in various in vitro diagnostic devices by constructing a soluble solid-phase immune sensor with high solubility using antibody-conjugated CNPs and polymer materials. Excellent performance was achieved using a free-antibody system with dual calibration. To verify the performance of this method with high reliability, canine C-reactive protein was selected as the immune analyte. Interestingly, our method efficiently mitigated the hook effect with outstanding performance in a one-step reaction without blood dilution or reaction mixing. The detection range of the target can be effectively controlled using free antibodies. Therefore, our CNP-based immunodiagnosis method may advance the commercialization of point-of-care immune biosensors.
Keywords: Biosensor; C-reactive protein; Carbon nanoparticles; Hook effect; In vitro diagnostics; Point-of-Care.
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