Preliminary study of simultaneous multi-anticoagulant deficiency diagnosis by fiber optic multi-analyte biosensor

Protein C (PC), protein S (PS), antithrombin III, and plasminogen are four important anticoagulants in blood plasma. Deficiency of any of these biomolecules may lead to thrombo-embolic complications including lung embolism, heart attack, and stroke. A multi-factor sensing system is beneficial for identifying the cause of abnormal blood clotting more effectively, rapidly, and cost-effectively. As an initial effort toward simultaneous multi-anticoagulant detection, a PC and PS dual-sensing system has been under development in our research group. A fiberoptic PC biosensor utilizing fluorophore-mediated sandwich immunoassay was already developed for rapid (-5 minutes) PC deficiency diagnosis. After a single PS sensor was developed for the PS deficiency diagnosis, the two sensors were connected in series to form a dual-sensing system. The cross-reactivity between the analytes and the sensors was found to be minimal. For easier sensing operation, a mixture of fluorophore-linked anti-PC and anti-PS was applied. The results showed that the mixture can be used with a slight signal reduction. When PC and PS was mixed in a sample, the signal intensity was decreased by approximately 5% for both sensors. A study is currently being performed to overcome the signal reduction by increasing the flow velocity and incubation time.