Carbon nanotube-based lateral flow immunoassay for ultrasensitive detection of proteins: application to the determination of IgG.

Authors report on a carbon nanotube (CNT)-based lateral flow immunoassay (LFI) for ultrasensitive detection of proteins. Shortened multiwalled CNTs were used as a colored (black) tag. The detection antibody was covalently immobilized on the CNT surface via diimide-activated conjugation between the carboxyl groups on the CNT surface and amino groups of antibodies. The assay involved the capture of target protein in a sandwich-type format between an immobilized capture antibody on the test zone of LFI and a CNT-labelled detection antibody. CNTs were thus captured on the test zone of the LFI and gave a black colored line to enable visual detection of protein. Quantitative results were obtained by reading the test line intensities with a portable strip reader. Rabbit IgG was used as a model target to demonstrate the proof-of-concept. Combining the advantages of lateral flow assay with the unique physical properties of CNT (color, high aspect-to-size ratio and ease of surface modification), the optimized LFI can detect of 1.3 pg mL-1 of rabbit IgG (S/N = 3). This is three orders lower than that of gold nanoparticle-based LFI. Rabbit IgG spiked into human plasma samples was successfully detected with this LFI. Conceivably, this method can be extended to various other proteins for which adequate antibodies do exist. Graphical abstract Carbon nanotubes are used as black tags in an ultrasensitive lateral flow immunoassay (LFI). The LFI was applied to the determination of rabbit IgG. The detection limit is more than 3 orders of magnitude lower than that of the conventional gold nanopaticle-based LFI.