Acoustic trapping as a generic non-contact incubation site for multiplex bead-based assays.

In this study, we show a significantly reduced assay time and a greatly increased bead recovery for a commercial Luminex-based multiplex diagnostic immunoassay by performing all liquid handling steps of the assay protocol in a non-contact acoustic trapping platform. The Luminex assay is designed for detecting antibodies in poultry serum for infectious bursal disease virus, infectious bronchitis virus, Newcastle disease virus and avian reovirus. Here, we show proof-of-concept of a microfluidic system capable of being fully automated and handling samples in a parallel format with a miniature physical footprint where the affinity beads are retained in a non-contact levitated mode in a glass capillary throughout the assay protocol. The different steps are: incubation with the serum sample, secondary antibodies and fluorescent reporters and finally washing to remove any non-specifically bound species. A Luminex 200 instrument was used for the readout. The flow rates applied to the capillary during the initial trapping event and the wash steps were optimised for maximum bead recovery, resulting in a bead recovery of 75% for the complete assay. This can be compared to a bead recovery of approximately 30% when an automatic wash station was used when the assay was performed in the conventional manual format. The time for the incubation steps for a single assay was reduced by more than 50%, without affecting assay performance, since intermediate wash steps became redundant in the continuously perfused bead trapping capillary. We analyzed seven samples, in triplicates, and we can show that the readout of the assay performed in the acoustic trap compared 100% to the control ELISAs (positive or negative readout) and resulted in comparable S/P values as the conventional manual protocol. As the acoustic trapping does not require the particles to have magnetic properties, a greater degree of freedom in selecting microparticles can be provided. In extension, this can provide an opportunity to develop cheaper and more effective microparticles.

Porous silicon antibody microarrays for quantitative analysis: measurement of free and total PSA in clinical plasma samples.

The antibody microarrays have become widespread, but their use for quantitative analyses in clinical samples has not yet been established. We investigated an immunoassay based on nanoporous silicon antibody microarrays for quantification of total prostate-specific-antigen (PSA) in 80 clinical plasma samples, and provide quantitative data from a duplex microarray assay that simultaneously quantifies free and total PSA in plasma. To further develop the assay the porous silicon chips was placed into a standard 96-well microtiter plate for higher throughput analysis. The samples analyzed by this quantitative microarray were 80 plasma samples obtained from men undergoing clinical PSA testing (dynamic range: 0.14-44 ng/ml, LOD: 0.14 ng/ml). The second dataset, measuring free PSA (dynamic range: 0.40-74.9 ng/ml, LOD: 0.47 ng/ml) and total PSA (dynamic range: 0.87-295 ng/ml, LOD: 0.76 ng/ml), was also obtained from the clinical routine. The reference for the quantification was a commercially available assay, the ProStatus PSA Free/Total DELFIA. In an analysis of 80 plasma samples the microarray platform performs well across the range of total PSA levels. This assay might have the potential to substitute for the large-scale microtiter plate format in diagnostic applications. The duplex assay paves the way for a future quantitative multiplex assay, which analyzes several prostate cancer biomarkers simultaneously.