Analytical Sciences

Lateral Flow Immunoassay with the Signal Enhanced by Gold Nanoparticle Aggregates Based on Polyamidoamine Dendrimer

Guangyu SHEN,* Hui XU,** Anant S. GURUNG,** Yunhui YANG,*** and Guodong LIU**

*College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University of Arts and Science, Changde 415000, Hunan, P. R. China
**Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105, USA
***College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650092, P. R. China

In order to amplify the signal in a gold nanoparticle-based lateral flow immunoassay, a simple and sensitive method utilizing gold nanoparticle aggregates as a colored reagent formed with a polyamidoamine dendrimer was developed. The results were compared with that achieved by employing the individual nanoparticles used in the conventional lateral flow immunoassay. Under the optimized experimental conditions, a detection limit of 0.1 ng mL⁻¹ for rabbit immunoglobulin G was achieved, which is almost 20-fold lower than that of the traditional method using individual gold nanoparticles. We believe that this simple, practical bioassay platform will be of interest for use in areas such as disease diagnostics, pathogen detection, and quality monitoring of food and water.

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