Enhanced lateral flow immunoassay using gold nanoparticles loaded with enzymes

Briefly in a LFIA with an immune-sandwich format AuNPs are functionalized with a detection antibody already modified with HRP, obtaining an 'enhanced' label. Two different detection strategies have been tested: the first one following just the red color of the AuNPs and the second one using a substrate for the HRP (3 different substrates are evaluated), which produces a darker color that enhances the intensity of the previous red color of the unmodified AuNPs. In such very simple way it is gaining sensitivity (up to 1 order of magnitude) without losing the simplicity of the LFIA format, opening the way to other LFIA applications including their on-demand performance tuning according to the analytical scenario.