Influence of bovine and human serum albumin on the binding kinetics of biomolecular interactions.

Bovine serum albumin (BSA) containing buffers are the standard blocking buffer in biosensing, yet human serum is the intended application for most clinical sensors. However, the effect of human serum albumin (HSA) on binding assays remains underexplored. A simple and well-studied assay (human IgG/goat anti-human IgG) was investigated with a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor to address this fundamental question in sensing. Calibrations were performed with buffers containing various concentrations of bovine or human serum albumin, as well as full and diluted bovine or IgG-depleted human serum. It was found that HSA or human serum, but not BSA or bovine serum, significantly affected the SPR shift and binding constants of the assay. Interestingly, large differences were also observed depending on whether the animal or human antibody was immobilized on the SPR chip for detection, highlighting that matrix protein/analyte/receptor interactions play a significant role in the response. We find that the interaction of soluble HSA with human IgG interferes with the recognition region, affecting the binding constant, and thus results obtained in BSA are not necessarily applicable to clinical samples or in vivo conditions. We also clearly demonstrate why a minimum dilution of 1 : 10 is often required in SPR assays to remove most background effects. Taken together, these results show that: (1) BSA does not affect the binding constant between antibodies and thus serves its purpose well when only surface blocking is intended, (2) HSA is an adequate surrogate for human serum in assay optimization, and (3) blocking buffers should be prepared with HSA in the optimization steps of assays to be translated to human blood or serum.

Robustness enhancement of dynamic spectroscopic ellipsometry by compensating temperature dependency of the monolithic polarizing interferometer.

This paper describes a robust dynamic spectroscopic ellipsometer that can provide a highly accurate and reliable real-time spectroscopic polarization measurement capability for various in-line nanoscale measurement applications. The robustness of dynamic spectroscopic ellipsometry is enhanced significantly by employing a compensation channel that removes the temperature dependency of the monolithic polarizing interferometric module, and it results in highly accurate dynamic spectral ellipsometric measurements. We present how the monolithic interferometer is affected by external disturbances and show experimentally that the proposed scheme can provide a few hundreds of times long-term stability enhancement compared with a single-channel-based dynamic spectroscopic ellipsometer scheme.

Combining multilayered wrinkled polymer SERS substrates and spectral data processing for low concentration analyte detection.

A series of thermally shrinkable polymer surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates were prepared with bimetallic Au and Ag (oxidized or not) films and with Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) located at different places in the layered structure to evaluate the synergistic effect of different known SERS amplification methods to enhance the Raman signal for low concentration dopamine detection. A bimetallic Au and Ag layered structure improved the Raman signal by 5 and 2 times compared to the single-layered Au and Ag films. Oxidizing the Ag layer prior to deposition of Au further improved the signal by a factor of 2, while adding AuNP on wrinkled films increased another 10 times the intensity of the Raman signal. It was found that the enhancement was another 10 times stronger when using AuNPs in combination with other means of enhancement such as with a silver underlayer or surface wrinkling. Wrinkling alone only gave a few-fold increase compared to a flat film, but the combination of wrinkling with AuNPs and a silver underlayer improved the SERS intensity by more than 3 orders of magnitude, showing the synergistic effect of these enhancement methods. The optimized sensors were then tested in dynamic SERS with low concentration dopamine solutions, where the signal showed characteristics of a digital SERS response. Raman spectra preprocessing and sorting software was developed to triage the SERS-active spectra from the null spectra, to count the detection events such as the ones observed in single molecule experiments.

Cross-validation of ELISA and a portable surface plasmon resonance instrument for IgG antibody serology with SARS-CoV-2 positive individuals.

We report on the development of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors and matching ELISAs for the detection of nucleocapsid and spike antibodies specific against the novel coronavirus 2019 (SARS-CoV-2) in human serum, plasma and dried blood spots (DBS). When exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the immune system responds by expressing antibodies at levels that can be detected and monitored to identify the fraction of the population potentially immunized against SARS-CoV-2 and support efforts to deploy a vaccine strategically. A SPR sensor coated with a peptide monolayer and functionalized with various sources of SARS-CoV-2 recombinant proteins expressed in different cell lines detected human anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies in clinical samples. Nucleocapsid expressed in different cell lines did not significantly change the sensitivity of the assays, whereas the use of a CHO cell line to express spike ectodomain led to excellent performance. This bioassay was performed on a portable SPR instrument capable of measuring 4 biological samples within 30 minutes of sample/sensor contact and the chip could be regenerated at least 9 times. Multi-site validation was then performed with in-house and commercial ELISA, which revealed excellent cross-correlations with Pearson's coefficients exceeding 0.85 in all cases, for measurements in DBS and plasma. This strategy paves the way to point-of-care and rapid testing for antibodies in the context of viral infection and vaccine efficacy monitoring.

Enhancement of Gold Nanoparticle Coupling with a 2D Plasmonic Crystal at High Incidence Angles.

2D nanoplasmonic substrates excited in transmission spectroscopy are ideal for several biosensing, metamaterial, and optical applications. We show that their excellent properties can be further improved with plasmonic coupling of Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) on gold-coated nanodisk arrays excited at large incidence angles of up to 50°. The Bragg modes (BM) thereby strongly couple to AuNP immobilized on the plasmonic substrate due to shorter decay length of the plasmon at higher incidence angles, leading to a further enhanced field between the AuNP and the plasmonic substrate. The field was highest and two hotspots were created at orthogonal positions for AuNP located close to the corner of the Au film and Au nanodisk, which was also observed for AuNP dimers. Hybridization between single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) immobilized on the surface of the AuNPs and the capture ssDNA on the gold-coated nanodisk arrays led to at least a 5-fold signal improvement and a 7-fold lower limit of detection at 7 pM for ssDNA-functionalized AuNPs at large incident angles. Thus, we demonstrate that higher field strength can be accessed and the significant advantages of working with high incidence angles with AuNP on a 2D plasmonic crystal in plasmonic sensing.

High Figure of Merit (FOM) of Bragg Modes in Au-Coated Nanodisk Arrays for Plasmonic Sensing.

Gold-coated nanodisk arrays of nearly micron periodicity are reported that have high figure of merit (FOM) and sensitivity necessary for plasmonic refractometric sensing, with the added benefit of suitability for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), large-scale microfabrication using standard photolithographic techniques and a simple instrumental setup. Gold nanodisk arrays are covered with a gold layer to excite the Bragg modes (BM), which are the propagative surface plasmons localized by the diffraction from the disk array. This generates surface-guided modes, localized as standing waves, leading to highly confined fields confirmed by a mapping of the SERS intensity and numerical simulations with 3D finite element method. The optimal gold-coated nanodisk arrays are applied for refractometric sensing in transmission spectroscopy with better performance than nanohole arrays and they are integrated to a 96-well plate reader for detection of IgY proteins in the nanometer range in PBS. The potential for sensing in biofluids is assessed with IgG detection in 1:1 diluted urine. The structure exhibits a high FOM of up to 46, exceeding the FOM of structures supporting surface plasmon polaritons and comparable to more complex nanostructures, demonstrating that subwavelength features are not necessary for high-performance plasmonic sensing.