Electrical Engineering, University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, UK.
Nanoscale. 2020 May 7;12(17):9647-9652. doi: 10.1039/d0nr00416b. Epub 2020 Apr 22.
Easy monitoring of prostate specific antigen (PSA) directly from blood samples would present a significant improvement as compared to conventional diagnostic methods. In this work, a split mode thin film bulk acoustic resonator (TFBAR) device was employed for the first time for label-free measurements of PSA concentrations in the whole blood and without sample pre-treatment. The surface of the sensor was covalently modified with anti-PSA antibodies and demonstrated a very high sensitivity of 101 kHz mL ng and low limit of detection (LOD) of 0.34 ng mL in model spiked solutions. It has previously been widely believed that significant pre-processing of blood samples would be required for TFBAR biosensors. Importantly, this work demonstrates that this is not the case, and TFBAR technology provides a cost-effective means for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics and monitoring of PSA in hospitals and in doctors' offices. Additionally, the accuracy of the developed biosensor, with respect to a commercial auto analyser (Beckman Coulter Access), was evaluated to analyse clinical samples, giving well-matched results between the two methods, thus showing a practical application in quantitative monitoring of PSA levels in the whole blood with very good signal recovery.
与传统诊断方法相比，直接从血液样本中轻松监测前列腺特异性抗原 (PSA) 将是一个重大的进步。在这项工作中，首次使用分体型薄膜体声波谐振器 (TFBAR) 设备对全血中的 PSA 浓度进行无标记测量，而无需进行样品预处理。传感器的表面通过共价键与抗 PSA 抗体进行修饰，在模型加标溶液中表现出非常高的灵敏度为 101 kHz mL ng，低检测限 (LOD) 为 0.34 ng mL。此前人们普遍认为，TFBAR 生物传感器需要对血液样本进行大量预处理。重要的是，这项工作证明并非如此，TFBAR 技术为医院和医生办公室的 PSA 即时检测和监测提供了一种具有成本效益的手段。此外，还评估了开发的生物传感器相对于商业自动分析仪（贝克曼库尔特 Access）的准确性，以分析临床样本，两种方法的结果非常匹配，从而展示了在全血中定量监测 PSA 水平方面的实际应用，具有非常好的信号恢复。
