A reagentless electrochemiluminescent immunosensor for apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 detection based on the new Ru(bpy)32+/bi-arginine system

Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE-1), a kind of multifunctional protein widely-distributed in the body, plays an essential role in the DNA base excision repair and serves as multiple possible roles in the response of human cancer to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. In this work, an ultrasensitive solid-state electrochemiluminescence (ECL) immunosensor is designed to determine APE-1 based on the new Ru(bpy)(3)(2+)/bi-arginine system. The bi-arginine (bi-Arg) is decorated on the Au nanoparticles functionalized magnetic Fe3O4/reduced graphene oxide (bi-Arg/Au@Fe3O4-rGO) according to the self-assembling and covalent cross-linking interaction to obtain the functionalized nanocomposite of bi-Arg/Au@Fe3O4-rGO. Herein, the bi-Arg/Au@Fe3O4-rGO plays not only an amplification label to enhance the ECL signal of Ru(bpy)(3)(2+) due to the coreactant of bi-Arg but also an ideal nanocarrier to load numerous secondary antibody. Based on sandwich-type immunoassay format, this proposed method offers a linear range of 1.0 fg mL(-1)-5.0 pg mL(-1) and an estimated detection limit of 0.3 fg mL(-1) for the APE-1. Moreover, the reagentless ECL immunosensor also exhibits high sensitivity, excellent selectivity and good stability, which has greatly potential development and application in clinical diagnostics, immunology and biomedical research. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.