Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy-based, homogeneous, multiplexed immunoassay with antibody-fragments-decorated gold nanoparticles.

We report the development of a novel single-step, multiplexed, homogeneous immunoassay platform for sensitive detection of protein targets based on our realization of high surface-enhanced raman spectroscopy (SERS) signal enhancement by controlled assembly of SERS nanoparticles. An essential design of this platform is the use of gold nanoparticles or nanorods codecorated with specially reduced antibody half-fragments, nonfluorescent Raman-active dyes, and passivating proteins as the SERS nanoparticles. These nanoparticles offer a facile approach to accomplish orientational immobilization of antibodies, minimized interparticle distance, multicolor Raman fingerprint coding, low fluorescence background, as well as excellent biocompatibility and stability. Through sandwiched antibody-antigen interactions, controlled assembly of SERS nanoparticles is realized with a strong SERS signal achieved via plasmonic coupling, creating an immunoassay platform for rapid, sensitive, multiplexed quantification of proteins. This platform is demonstrated for reproducible quantification of three cytokines, interferon gamma, interleukin-2, and tumor necrosis factor alpha, with large signal-to-noise ratio. It is also successfully applied to multiplexed cytokine analysis for T cell secretion studies in complicated biological samples. The developed SERS immunoassay platform may create a simple but valuable tool for facilitating accurate validation and early detection of disease biomarkers as well as for point-of-care tests in clinical diagnostics.