Magnetic particles-based enzyme immunoassay for rapid determination of secoiridoid glycoside, amarogentin

Amarogentin (AG) is one of the bitter secoiridoid glycosides, which exerts various pharmacological activities as a bitter stomachic. Recently, there is an increasing demand for AG-containing plants in Japan due to their use as folk medicines and food additives; hence, it is crucial to develop analytical techniques that are specific for AG. In this study, a new magnetic particles-based enzyme immunoassay (MPs-EIA) using a specific monoclonal antibody against AG (MAb 1E9) for the rapid determination of AG in plants of the family Gentianaceae was described. AG directly immobilized onto magnetic particles (MPs) was used as a competitor for free AG against MAb 1E9, thereby increasing the surface area of the solid phase and decreasing the immunoreaction time. In addition, the blocking step required in case of the conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay could be avoided in the proposed MPs-EIA, which enables an even more rapid performance for the immunoassay. In the developed MPs-EIA, AG exhibited linearity in the range of 15.6-500 ng mL^-1, with a limit of detection of 8.58 ng mL^-1. Validation analysis revealed that MPs-EIA is a sufficiently sensitive and rapid for the quantitative analysis of AG in plant samples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first MPs-EIA that has been applied to plant samples.