Selective determination of an ovarian cancer biomarker at low concentrations with surface imprinted nanotube based chemosensor

Abstract

In this study, an electrochemical chemosensor that utilizes a conductive polymer-based molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) surface for rapid and reliable determination of CA125 was devised. A novel method has been applied to fabricate CA125 imprinted polypyrrole nanotubes (MI-PPy NT) via vapor deposition polymerization (VDP) as a recognition element for highly selective and sensitive determination of CA125. The chemosensor was prepared by immobilizing MI-PPy NT onto screen-printed gold electrodes (Au-SPE) and the performance of the sensor was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, linear dynamic concentration range (LDR) and limit of detection (LOD). The MI-PPy NT@Au-SPE sensor exhibited high sensitivity (68.57 μA per decade) to the CA125 concentration ranging from 0.1 U mL−1 to 100 U mL−1 at an LOD of 0.4 U mL−1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.9922. The developed chemosensors with their novel design combined with a facile fabrication method, prove to be promising as future state-of-the-art biosensors.