Application of a microfluidic paper-based bioimmunosensor with laser-induced fluorescence detection in the determination of alpha-fetoprotein from serum of hepatopaths.

As a common plasma protein, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is widely applied as the tumor biomarker for the diagnosis of many cancers. To develop a low cost, high sensitive and high-throughput method for the determination of AFP is significant for the disease diagnosis. In this work, an immunoassay with sandwich-type structures was performed on a paper-based chip for the analysis of AFP. AFP could be captured by the primary antibodies which were immobilized on the paper by chitosan. On the secondary antibodies, the modified initiator DNAs could trigger the hybridization chain reaction to amplify the fluorescence signals for AFP. A laser-induced fluorescence detector coupled with an interface was applied to detect the targets on the paper-based chip. Under the optimized conditions, the detection limit for AFP was 1.0 pg/mL. For every test, the sample solution consumption only was 10 μL. Finally, the method was applied to determine the AFP in serum of normal person and hepatopaths with hepatic malignant tumor, chronic hepatitis B and other suspected liver diseases. The AFP could be found from all of the samples and the results were similar to that obtained by chemiluminescence immunoassay. The recoveries for AFP ranged from 93.8% to 106%, which indicated the method was reliable. The method based on paper chip had great potential in the application of AFP determination.