Ultrasensitive magnetic field-assisted surface plasmon resonance immunoassay for human cardiac troponin I

An ultrasensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) immunoassay was developed for the specific detection of human cardiac troponin I (cTnI), a principle diagnostic marker for myocardial damage. The thin gold film evaporated on a glass slate, which was employed as the SPR sensing film, was modified by hollow gold nanoparticles (HGNPs) and polydopamine (PDA) sequentially, and then was immobilized with antibodies for specific recognition of target analyte. Electronic coupling of the surface plasmon waves originating from the HGNPs and the gold film leads to the remarkable amplification of SPR response. The PDA film modified on the gold film via self-polymerization of dopamine (DA) facilitates the direct immobilization of capture antibodies (cAb). To separate and enrich the target analyte, PDA-wrapped magnetic multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MMWCNTs-PDA) were conjugated with detection antibodies (dAb) and used as the extracting agent for the magnetic extraction of cTnI in sample. Large surface area of MMWCNTs-PDA ensures its loading capacity for dAb, as well as its extraction efficiency for cTnI. By serving as the vehicles for fast delivering the concentrated analyte to the SPR sensing surface, MMWCNTs-PDA-dAb also overcomes the disadvantage of slow diffusionlimited mass transfer and matrix interference effect in regular patterns. The combination of the above improvements results in the significant sensitivity enhancement of the SPR immunoassay. The concentration of cTnI with minimum detectable SPR response obtained by the present assay is 1.25 ng mL(-1), which is 1000-fold lower than that obtained by the traditional SPR immunoassay based on PDA-modified gold film.