Electrospin-coating of nitrocellulose membrane enhances sensitivity in nucleic acid-based lateral flow assay

Yew CT 1 , Azari P 2 , Choi JR 3 , Li F 4 , Pingguan-Murphy B 5

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Bioinspired Engineering and Biomechanics Centre (BEBC), Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China
  • 2 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Centre of Applied Biomechanics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, 2054-6250 Applied Science Lane, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
  • 4 Bioinspired Engineering and Biomechanics Centre (BEBC), Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China; The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China. Electronic address: feili@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
  • 5 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Centre for the Initiation of Talent and Industrial Training (CITra), University of Malaya 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Electronic address: bpingguan@um.edu.my
Anal Chim Acta, 2018 Jun 07;1009:81-88.
PMID: 29422135 DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2018.01.016

Abstract

Point-of-care biosensors are important tools developed to aid medical diagnosis and testing, food safety and environmental monitoring. Paper-based biosensors, especially nucleic acid-based lateral flow assays (LFA), are affordable, simple to produce and easy to use in remote settings. However, the sensitivity of such assays to infectious diseases has always been a restrictive challenge. Here, we have successfully electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) on nitrocellulose (NC) membrane to form a hydrophobic coating to reduce the flow rate and increase the interaction rate between the targets and gold nanoparticles-detecting probes conjugates, resulting in the binding of more complexes to the capture probes. With this approach, the sensitivity of the PCL electrospin-coated test strip has been increased by approximately ten-fold as compared to the unmodified test strip. As a proof of concept, this approach holds great potential for sensitive detection of targets at point-of-care testing.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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