Highly sensitive poly[glycidyl methacrylate-co-poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate] brush-based flow-through microarray immunoassay device.

Flow-through immunoassay is an attractive method for fast, inexpensive and high-throughput protein analyses. However, its practical application is limited by low sensitivity. In this work, a highly sensitive flow-through microarray immunoassay device is developed, in which a poly[glycidyl methacrylate-co-poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate] (P(GMA-co-PEGMA)) brush as a flexible matrix is uniformly coated on a glass slide through a purge-free surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP) to immobilize capture proteins for a larger loading capacity and higher bioactivity while allowing easy target access to the brush-attached probes for efficient antibody-antigen (Ab-Ag) bindings. The integrated device is then constructed by simply laminating the protein-arrayed slide onto a ready-for-bonding double-sided adhesive tape-attached poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) microfluidic structure. As a demonstration, a parallel microarray panel is designed to perform flow-through immunoassays for good detection flexibility and simultaneous analysis of various samples. The limit of detection (LOD) of 1-10 pg/mL for detected target proteins is achieved, which is one to two orders better than those of reported flow-through immunoassays. The device also demonstrates significantly reduced total assay time over the static microarray immunoassay. The rapid and sensitive detection can be mainly ascribed to the P(GMA-co-PEGMA) brushed substrate, of which both the hydrophilicity from its PEG component and the binding capability from its GMA moiety result in higher protein loading capacity, lower nonspecific adsorption, and higher Ab-Ag binding efficiency. The integrated microfluidic device was further used to detect an important cancer biomarker carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) in serum and achieved a LOD of 10 pg/mL, demonstrating its great potential for clinical applications.