Sensitive detection of multiple mycotoxins by SPRi with gold nanoparticles as signal amplification tags

•SPRi chip is modified by a polymer brush with uniform antigen loading capacity.•Mycotoxins are detected with competitive immunoassay format.•Antibody-conjugated AuNPs are employed to amplify the SPRi signal.•Specific and sensitive simultaneous detection is achieved for three mycotoxins.

Detection of multiple toxic mycotoxins is of importance in food quality control. Surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) is an advanced tool for simultaneously multiple detections with accuracy; however, it suffers from limited sensitivity due to the instrumental constraint and small sizes of mycotoxins with only one epitope for an insensitive competitive immunoassay. In this work a gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-enhanced SPRi chip is designed to sensitively detect multiple mycotoxins using a competitive immunoassay format. The sensing surface is constructed by uniformly attaching dense mycotoxin antigens on poly[oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate-co-glycidyl methacrylate] (POEGMA-co-GMA) brush modified SPRi gold chip. After competitive binding in a sample solution containing respective monoclonal antibodies, secondary antibody-conjugated AuNPs are employed to bind with the captured monoclonal antibodies for further amplification of the SPRi signal. Highly specific and sensitive simultaneous detection is achieved for three typical mycotoxins including Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), Ochratoxin A (OTA) and Zearalenone (ZEN) with low detection limits of 8, 30 and 15 pg mL−1 and dynamic ranges covering three orders of magnitude.

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