Investigations on TGA-Capped CdTe Quantum-Dots for Detection and Quantitative Assessment of Chikungunya Infection through Lateral Flow Immunoassay

Abstract

In this paper, we report improved sensitivity of the lateral flow immunoassay (LFI) for diagnosis of chikungunya using highly luminescent Thioglycolic acid (TGA) capped CdTe quantum dots (QDs). The size of the CdTe QDs was controlled by varying the refluxing time during the chemical route synthesis. The systematically optimized TGA capped CdTe QDs were conjugated with the anti-chikungunya virus (CHIKV) antibodies and were utilized to fabricate the LFIs. These LFIs were tested using different concentrations of the recombinant protein of CHIKV, and the quantified results were compared with those obtained by colloidal gold-based LFIs. It has been shown that the LFIs based on TGA capped CdTe QDs show significantly higher sensitivity to chikungunya detection due to enhanced luminescence of the QDs at C and T lines of the LFI under UV illumination as compared to state of the art colloidal gold-based LFIs under normal light.