Prussian blue nanoparticles based lateral flow assay for high sensitive determination of clenbuterol

Prussian blue nanoparticles (PBNPs), one kind of metal organic frameworks with the general formula of Fe4[Fe(CN)6]3·nH2O, are increasing attractive due to their excellent properties. Here, with PBNPs as labels, a PBNP-based competitive lateral flow assay (LFA) for efficient and sensitive detection of clenbuterol was developed. With unique control structure, PBNPs are quite larger than most of the commonly used labels, meaning much fewer antibodies are needed in the probe to produce clearly visible results, which will bring a more sensitive dose-response relation between the analyte concentration and signal intensity. Under optimal conditions, the PBNP-based LFA showed a great linear relationship over the range of 0.5–5 ng mL−1 for clenbuterol. The visual limit of detection was 1.0 ng mL−1, 5-fold improvement in sensitivity compared with that of the traditional gold nanoparticles based LFA. In our perception, our work opens new possibilities to choose metal organic frameworks as labeling matrices in immunoassays.