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Updated: Aug 12, 2025
Microfluidic Chip Fabrication and Method to Detect Influenza
Published on: March 26, 2013
Dissolution-Enhanced Luminescence Enhanced Digital Microfluidics Immunoassay for Sensitive and Automated Detection of
Lianyu Lu1, Huimin Zhang2, Yang Wang1
1The MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis & Instrumentation, the Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology of Fujian Province, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Department of Chemistry, Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
Abstract:
Protein bioassay is a critical tool for the screening and detection of protein biomarkers in disease diagnostics and biological applications. However, the detection sensitivity and system automation of current immunoassays do not meet the emerging demands of clinical applications. Here, we developed a dissolution-enhanced luminescence-enhanced digital microfluidics immunoassay (DEL-DMF), which significantly improves the sensitivity and automation of the protein bioassay. In DEL-DMF, the sample and reagent droplets are controlled to complete the processes of sample transport, immunoreaction, and buffer washing, which not only minimizes sample consumption to 2 μL and enhances the binding efficiency of immunoreaction but also streamlines all the procedures and simplifies the process of immunoassay. Moreover, dissolution-enhanced luminescence using NaEuF4 NPs as nanoprobes boosts the fluorescence and increases the sensitivity of the bioassay. We demonstrate the enhanced analytical performance of our DEL-DMF immunoassay to detect H5N1 hemagglutinin in human serum and saliva. A limit of detection of 1.16 pM was achieved in less than 0.5 h with only 2 μL sample consumption. Overall, our DEL-DMF immunoassay combines the merits of the microfluidics platform and dissolution-enhanced luminescence, thus affording superior detection sensitivity and system automation for protein biomarkers. This novel immunoassay microsystem holds great potential in clinical and biological applications.
