Luan Jingyi, Morrissey Jeremiah J, Wang Zheyu, Derami Hamed Gholami, Liu Keng-Ku, Cao Sisi, Jiang Qisheng, Wang Congzhou, Kharasch Evan D, Naik Rajesh R, Singamaneni Srikanth
1Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St Louis, MO 63130 USA.
2Department of Anesthesiology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63110 USA.
Light Sci Appl. 2018 Jul 4;7:29. doi: 10.1038/s41377-018-0027-8. eCollection 2018.
Fluorescence-based techniques are the cornerstone of modern biomedical optics, with applications ranging from bioimaging at various scales (organelle to organism) to detection and quantification of a wide variety of biological species of interest. However, the weakness of the fluorescence signal remains a persistent challenge in meeting the ever-increasing demand to image, detect, and quantify biological species with low abundance. Here, we report a simple and universal method based on a flexible and conformal elastomeric film with adsorbed plasmonic nanostructures, which we term a "plasmonic patch," that provides large (up to 100-fold) and uniform fluorescence enhancement on a variety of surfaces through simple transfer of the plasmonic patch to the surface. We demonstrate the applications of the plasmonic patch in improving the sensitivity and limit of detection (by more than 100 times) of fluorescence-based immunoassays implemented in microtiter plates and in microarray format. The novel fluorescence enhancement approach presented here represents a disease, biomarker, and application agnostic ubiquitously applicable fundamental and enabling technology to immediately improve the sensitivity of existing analytical methodologies in an easy-to-handle and cost-effective manner, without changing the original procedures of the existing techniques.
基于荧光的技术是现代生物医学光学的基石，其应用范围涵盖从各种尺度（从细胞器到生物体）的生物成像到对多种感兴趣的生物物种的检测和定量。然而，在满足对低丰度生物物种进行成像、检测和定量的不断增长的需求方面，荧光信号的弱点仍然是一个持续存在的挑战。在此，我们报告了一种基于具有吸附等离子体纳米结构的柔性共形弹性体薄膜的简单通用方法，我们将其称为“等离子体贴片”，通过将等离子体贴片简单转移到表面，该贴片可在各种表面上提供大幅（高达100倍）且均匀的荧光增强。我们展示了等离子体贴片在提高微量滴定板和微阵列形式的基于荧光的免疫测定的灵敏度和检测限（超过100倍）方面的应用。本文提出的新型荧光增强方法代表了一种与疾病、生物标志物和应用无关的普遍适用的基础和赋能技术，能够以易于操作且具有成本效益的方式立即提高现有分析方法的灵敏度，而无需改变现有技术的原始程序。
