A hand-held electrochemiluminescence biosensor for detection of carcinoembryonic antigen

After the development of portable glucose biosensor, challenges have remained to fabricate more portable devices for sensitive and reproducible detection of other biomarkers. Here, we fabricated a hand-held device for the quantification of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) or any other biomarkers based on electrochemiluminescence (ECL) using a bipolar electrode (BPE). The detection mechanism was based on a sandwich assay composed of a capture antibody and a secondary antibody conjugated with a robust ECL reporter. The ECL reporter was fabricated by conjugation of luminol on streptavidin-coated gold nanoparticle (Lum@SA-AuNP), leaving the biotin binding sites of the streptavidin intact for further conjugation with secondary antibody. This novel controlled functionalization strategy significantly enhanced the reproducibility and robustness of the biosensor. Moreover, an inventive parabolic reflector was implemented in the design, in order to maximize the lights to be captured by the photodiode (detector) and measured by a simple multimeter. Due to the synergetic signal amplification, the developed biosensor demonstrated a low sensitivity of 2.51 ng/ml with a linear detection range from 5 to 300 ng/ml with the ability to perform well in spiked-in samples. The designed sensing mechanism can definitely pave the way for further development of miniaturized devices in multiple formats.