Power-free chip enzyme immunoassay for detection of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in serum

A power-free, portable “Chip EIA” was designed to render the popular Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) more suitable for point-of-care testing. A number of microfluidic platforms have enabled miniaturization of the conventional microtitre plate ELISA, however, they require external pumping systems, valves, and electric power supply. The Chip EIA platform has eliminated the need for pumps and valves through utilizing a simple permanent magnet and magnetic nanoparticles. The magnetic nanoparticles act as solid support to capture the target and are then moved through chambers harboring different reagents necessary to perform a sandwich ELISA. The use of magnetic nanoparticles increases the volume-to-surface ratio reducing the assay time to 30 min. Changing the color of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) substrate to green indicates a positive result. In addition, a quantitative read-out was obtained through the use of cellphone camera imaging and analyzing the images using Matlab®. Cell phones, including smart ones, are readily available almost everywhere. The Chip EIA device was used to assay total prostate specific antigen (tPSA) in 19 serum samples. The PSA Chip EIA was tested for accuracy, precision, repeatability, and the results were correlated to the commercial Beckman Colter, Hybritech immunoassay® for determination of tPSA in serum samples with a Pearson correlation coefficient (R2=0.96). The lower detection limit of the PSA Chip EIA was 3.2 ng/mL. The assay has 88.9% recovery and good reproducibility (% CV of 6.5). We conclude that the developed Chip EIA can be used for detection of protein biomarkers in biological specimens.