Highly Sensitive Magnetoelastic Biosensor for Alpha2-Macroglobulin Detection Based on MnFe2O4@chitosan/MWCNTs/PDMS Composite

Xing Guo; Jianru Hou; Yang Ge; Dong Zhao; Shengbo Sang; Jianlong Ji

doi:10.3390/mi14020401

Highly Sensitive Magnetoelastic Biosensor for Alpha2-Macroglobulin Detection Based on MnFe₂O₄@chitosan/MWCNTs/PDMS Composite

Micromachines (Basel). 2023 Feb 7;14(2):401. doi: 10.3390/mi14020401.

Authors

Xing Guo^{1

2}, Jianru Hou^{1

2}, Yang Ge^{1

2}, Dong Zhao^{1

2}, Shengbo Sang^{1

2}, Jianlong Ji^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shanxi Key Laboratory of Micro Nano Sensors & Artificial Intelligence Perception, College of Information and Computer, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China.
² Key Lab of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System of the Ministry of Education, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China.

Abstract

The need for Alpha2-Macroglobulin (α2-M) detection has increased because it plays an important role in the diagnosis of diabetic nephropathy (DN). However, few sensors can realize the high-sensitive detection for α2-M with characteristics of being fast, flexible, wearable and portable. Herein, a biosensor based on a MnFe₂O₄@chitosan/MWCNTs/PDMS composite film was developed for α2-M detection. Due to the excellent magnetoelastic effect of MnFe₂O₄ nanoparticles, the stress signal of the biosensor surface induced by the specific antibody-antigen binding was transformed into the electrical and magnetic signal. Chitosan-coated MnFe₂O₄ particles were used to provide biological modification sites for the α2-M antibody, which simplified the conventional biological functionalization modification process. The MnFe₂O₄@chitosan particles were successfully prepared by a chemical coprecipitation method and the property was studied by TEM, FT-IR and XRD. MWCNTs were employed to enhance electrical conductivity and the sensitivity of the biosensor. The detection limit (LOD) was reduced to 0.1299 ng·mL^-1 in the linear range from 10 ng∙mL^-1 to 100 µg·mL^-1, which was significantly lower than the limit of health diagnostics. The biosensor is fabricated by a simple method, with advantages of being rapid and highly-sensitive, and having selective detection of α2-M, which provides a novel method for the early diagnosis of DN, and it has potential in the point of care (PoC) field.

Keywords: chitosan-coated MnFe2O4 nanoparticles; magnetoelastic biosensor; magnetoelastic effect; multi-walled carbon nanotubes; α2-M.

Grants and funding

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the Key Research and Development Program of Shanxi Province (202202010101004), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51975400), Fundamental Research Program of Shanxi Province (20210302124164, 20210302124429, 20210302124557), Science and Technology Innovation Project of Colleges and Universities in Shanxi Province (2020L0076), The Natural Science Foundation Project of Shanxi Province (No.20210302123136), National Key Research and Development Program (2019YFB1310200).