Plasmonic-Enhanced Colorimetric Lateral Flow Immunoassays Using Bimetallic Silver-Coated Gold Nanostars

Supriya Atta, Yuanhao Zhao, Sebastian Sanchez, Deven Seedial, Jasmine Pramila Devadhasan, Alexander Jarrett Summers, Marcellene A. Gates-Hollingsworth, Kathryn J. Pflughoeft, Jian Gu, Douglas C. Montgomery, David P. AuCoin, Frederic Zenhausern, Tuan Vo-Dinh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The colorimetric lateral flow immunoassay (cLFIA) has gained widespread attention as a point-of-care testing (POCT) technique due to its low cost, short analysis time, portability, and capability of being performed by unskilled operators with minimal requirement of reagents. However, the low analytical sensitivity of conventional LFIA based on colloidal gold nanospheres limits their applications for sensitive detection of trace amounts of target analytes. In this study, we introduced a novel plasmonic-enhanced colorimetric LFIA (PE-cLFIA) platform featuring bimetallic silver-coated gold nanostars (BGNS) with exceptional optical properties, leading to ultrahigh visual color brightness. The BGNS-based PE-cLFIA was successfully applied to detect a model analyte, low-calcium response V (LcrV), a virulence protein factor found in Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of bubonic plague. The PE-cLFIA sensing using BGNS-3 composed of 45 nm silver thickness showed a high visual colorimetric sensitivity with a detection limit as low as 13.7 pg/mL, which was around 50 times more sensitive than that of a traditional gold nanoparticle-based LFIA. In addition, the antibody-conjugated BGNS-3 showed excellent stability over 6 months. To illustrate the potential for clinical applications, we demonstrated that our LFIA platform for detecting LcrV spiked in human serum without any sample preprocessing exhibited a detection limit of 22.8 pg/mL. These results open up new opportunities for developing hybrid nanoparticle systems for sensitive POCT PE-cLFIA screening for infectious disease detection.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)54907-54918
Number of pages12
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume16
Issue number40
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 9 2024

Keywords

  • lateral flow immunoassay
  • LFIA
  • nanostars
  • Plasmonics
  • silver-coated
  • Yersinia pestis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science

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