Self-Assembling Antibody Network Simplified Competitive Multiplex Lateral Flow Immunoassay for Point-of-Care Tests

Multiplex lateral flow immunoassay (mLFIA) has attracted great attention due to the increasing need for rapid detection of multiple analytes. However, it has a number of disadvantages with regard to accuracy and interference because of difficulties in simplifying the process of preparing nanomaterial-based probes. In this work, inspired by protein self-assembly, for the first time, a facile natural antibody network (NAN)-based mLFIA for multiple chloramphenicol (CAP) and streptomycin (STR) determination was designed. The NAN structure was constructed by introducing a second antibody (Ab₂) as a scaffold to noncovalently combine with various monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), thus permitting each mAb to act as an independent functional unit to maintain bioactivity. Furthermore, the NAN was colored by simple one-step staining using coomassie brilliant blue R-250 (CBBR) to form a chromogenic probe, eliminating the need for complex nanomaterials to improve reproducibility and precision. Under optimal conditions, a satisfactory detection performance (the visual limit of detection (v-LOD) of 3 ng mL^-1 for CAP and 20 ng mL^-1 for STR) was obtained for whole milk analysis, which met the basic requirement of detection and had good specificity, reproducibility (relative standard deviation (RSD) < 15%), and robustness. In addition, the precision of the detection results was improved usefully since the test procedure was simplified. Overall, the developed system enables fast, simple, and reliable point-of-care assays of multiple analytes.