Silver nanoprism etching-based plasmonic ELISA for the high sensitive detection of prostate-specific antigen

Ultrasensitive and quantitative detection using simple and low-cost assays is critical in clinical diagnostics. In this report, we developed a triangular silver nanoprism (AgNPRs) etching-based plasmonic biosensor for the detection of cancer biomarkers. The triangular AgNPRs-based plasmonic biosensor is an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay combined with the enzyme-mediated surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of triangular AgNPRs. Triangular AgNPRs uses the immune response of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) to trigger the glucose oxidase (GOx)-catalysed oxidation of glucose (Glu), producing hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide acts as an oxidant to etch the triangular AgNPRs into smaller spherical silver nanoparticles, which is accompanied by a substantial blueshift of the SPR peak and a colourimetric blue-to-purple change that can be observed by the naked eye. The SPR peak shift enables the quantitative assessment of PSA due to the remarkable colour change. The triangular AgNPRs-based plasmonic ELISA approach exhibited a quasilinear response to logarithmic PSA concentrations in the range of 10 fg/mL to 100 pg/mL with a limit of detection (LOD) of 4.1 fg/mL. In addition, the LOD of PSA in this approach exceeds that of the conventional HRP-based ELISA (1.25 ng/mL) approach by more than 5 orders of magnitude. Patient serum samples from 16 donors were assayed with triangular AgNPRs-based plasmonic ELISA. The results from the triangular AgNPRs-based immunoassay and the time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay showed excellent correlation, and there were no significant differences in the quantified amounts of PSA. The triangular AgNPRs-based plasmonic ELISA approach has advantages (ultrasensitive, cost-effective, ease of operation) that are expected to be of great interest in diagnostics and to be suitable for a point-of-care test.