Blu-ray Technology-Based Quantitative Assays for Cardiac Markers: From Disc Activation to Multiplex Detection

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally. To reduce the number of mortalities, reliable and rapid point-of-care (POC) diagnosis of AMI is extremely critical. We herein present a Blu-ray technology based assay platform for multiplex cardiac biomarker detection; not only off-the-shelf Blu-ray discs (BDs) were adapted as substrates to prepare standard immunoassays and DNA aptamer/antibody hybrid assays for the three key cardiac marker proteins (myoglobin, troponin I, and C-creative protein) but also an unmodified optical drive was directly employed to read the assay results digitally. In particular, we have shown that all three cardiac markers can be quantitated in their respective physiological ranges of interest, and the detection limits achieved are comparable with conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits. The Blu-ray assay platform was further validated by measuring real-world samples and establishing a linear correlation with the simultaneously obtained ELISA data. Without the need to modify either the hardware (Blu-ray discs and optical drives) or the software driver, this assay-on-a-BD technique promises to be a low-cost user-friendly quantitative tool for on-site chemical analysis and POC medical diagnosis.