Superporous agarose beads as a solid support for microfluidic immunoassay

We demonstrate here with the feasibility of superporous agarose (SA) beads as a solid support in microfluidic immunoassay by detecting goat IgG. In our procedure, SA beads containing superpores were covalently conjugated to protein A. The conjugated beads were introduced into a polydimethyl siloxane microfluidic device. The sandwich immunoassay was performed in the microfluidic device by subsequently introducing anti-goat IgG as the primary antibodies, goat IgG as analytes, alkaline phosphatase-conjugated F(ab′)2 anti-goat IgG as detection antibodies, and 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolylphosphate/nitroblue tetrazolium as substrate in a flow. Depending on the goat IgG concentration, dark and pinky precipitates appeared inside the microchannel immediately after the introduction of all the reagents. The minimum detection limit, 100 pg goat IgG/mL in PBS, was achieved with the naked eye. This enhanced sensitivity is mainly because analytical reagents were allowed to access the outer surface as well as the inner matrices of the beads. This is supported by the facts that the binding of fluorescein isothiocyanate IgG happened throughout the inside matrices of protein A-conjugated SA beads but was limited to the outer surface of protein A-conjugated homogeneous agarose beads. These results suggest that SA beads are highly suitable as a solid support for microfluidic immunoassays.