Peptide nanotubes/self-assembled polydopamine molecularly imprinted biochip for the impedimetric detection of human...

In the study, an impedimetric biochip was designed with molecularly imprinted polydopamine (MIP(pDa)) on peptide nanotube (PNT) functionalized screen printed electrodes (SPEs) and adopted first time as a support matrix to construct the electrochemical sensor for the determination of interleukin 6 (IL-6). IL-6, which is one of the important cytokines, was used as a template molecule during the self-assembly polymerization strategy of dopamine. Dopamine acted as a functional monomer and self-polymerization occurred without any initiator, enzyme, or crosslinker. Impedimetric, spectrometric, and morphological characterization data demonstrated that MIP(pDa)/PNT provided satisfactory performance for the impedimetric diagnosis of IL-6. Analyzed IL-6 biomolecules could be detected in the range of 1-200 pg/mL due to the good correlation between the redox pair response and the logarithm of IL-6 concentration. The MIP(pDa)/PNT electrode was capable of selective binding for IL-6 with high recovery values in urine sample. The designed methodology allowed us to detect IL-6 with an effective, facile and inexpensive route that was easy to fabricate and scale-up. The coupling of MIP(pDa)/PNT with SPEs and the use of the impedimetric detection approach holds great potential to provide a new avenue for clinical diagnostics because in these systems small volumes of samples can be analyzed without the need for any pre-processing steps in short times.