Near-Field Communication Tag for Colorimetric Glutathione Determination with a Paper-Based Microfluidic Device

Inmaculada Ortiz-Gómez; Almudena Rivadeneyra; José F Salmerón; Ignacio de Orbe-Payá; Diego P Morales; Luis Fermín Capitán-Vallvey; Alfonso Salinas-Castillo

doi:10.3390/bios13020267

Near-Field Communication Tag for Colorimetric Glutathione Determination with a Paper-Based Microfluidic Device

Biosensors (Basel). 2023 Feb 13;13(2):267. doi: 10.3390/bios13020267.

Authors

Inmaculada Ortiz-Gómez^{1

2}, Almudena Rivadeneyra^{2

3}, José F Salmerón^{2

3}, Ignacio de Orbe-Payá^{1

2}, Diego P Morales^{2

3}, Luis Fermín Capitán-Vallvey^{1

2}, Alfonso Salinas-Castillo^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ ECsens, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain.
² Unit of Excellence in Chemistry Applied to Biomedicine and the Environment, Faculty of Science, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain.
³ Electronic Devices Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Technology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain.

Abstract

Here, we propose a microfluidic paper-based analytical device (µPAD) implemented with a near-field communication (NFC) tag as a portable, simple and fast colorimetric method for glutathione (GSH) determination. The proposed method was based on the fact that Ag⁺ could oxidize 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) into oxidized blue TMB. Thus, the presence of GSH could cause the reduction of oxidized TMB, which resulted in a blue color fading. Based on this finding, we developed a method for the colorimetric determination of GSH using a smartphone. A µPAD implemented with the NFC tag allowed the harvesting of energy from a smartphone to activate the LED that allows the capture of a photograph of the µPAD by the smartphone. The integration between electronic interfaces into the hardware of digital image capture served as a means for quantitation. Importantly, this new method shows a low detection limit of 1.0 µM. Therefore, the most important features of this non-enzymatic method are high sensitivity and a simple, fast, portable and low-cost determination of GSH in just 20 min using a colorimetric signal.

Keywords: NFC tag; colorimetric assay; glutathione determination; health prognosis; smartphone; µPAD.

MeSH terms

Benzidines
Colorimetry* / methods
Glutathione*
Limit of Detection
Smartphone

Substances

Glutathione
3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine
Benzidines

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the BBVA Foundation through the 2019 Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators and the European Commission through the fellowship H2020-MSCA-IF-2017-794885-SELFSEN. Additionally, it was founded by the Spanish “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad” (Project PID2019-103938RB-I00), (PID2020-117344RBI00) and Junta de Andalucía (Projects BFQM-243-UGR18 and P18-RT-2961). The projects were partially supported by European Regional Development Funds (ERDF).