Superhydrophobic surface-based magnetic electrochemical immunoassay for detection of Schistosoma japonicum antibodies

Abstract

In this paper, a magnetic electrochemical immunoassay that uses a superhydrophobic surface-based analytical platform (SSAP) has been initially developed for detection of Schistosoma japonicum (Sj) antibodies (SjAb). The SSAP is fabricated by modifying the inner surfaces of plastic test tubes with superhydrophobic polycarbonate coatings that show a water contact angle up to 160° and a water rolling angle less than 5°. In a noncompetitive sandwich format, the SjAb immunoassay with magnetic particles is based on sensitive stripping voltammetry analysis coupled with the copper enhanced Au nanoparticle tag amplification. This technique is quantitatively sensitive to SjAb concentrations ranging from 2ngml−1 to 15μgml−1, with a detection limit of ∼1.3ngml−1. Moreover, the results of assaying several serum specimens prove its feasibility of practical applications. The self-cleaning SSAP can be reused, because no aqueous samples reagents or contaminate the superhydrophobic polycarbonate during the experiments. The comparison study additionally demonstrates that the SSAP-based magnetic electrochemical immunoassays can offer preferable advantages over the existing approaches for SjAb detection, in terms of volumes of samples and reagents, assay time, and detection limit.