He Yiran, Jiang Min, Liang Zhenlong, Luo Zhaoxu, Qin Jingyi, Shen Ye, Gu Yayun, Ma Xiaodong, Wang Hong, Li Xin, Shi Ying, Chen Yanhua, Pu Kefeng, Li Jiong
School of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, China.
Nat Commun. 2025 Apr 29;16(1):3990. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-59390-1.
High throughput immunoassay is increasingly crucial for both scientific and clinical applications. Here we propose a "Lab-in-a-Tip" (LIT) concept to fabricate a pipette tip containing a high-density protein array and other essential reagents. The protein array is made by self-assembling digitally encoded microparticles inside the modified tip. Mounted on a robotic workstation, it automates liquid-handling steps. Notably, compared with Luminex, the current gold standard in multiplex immunoassays, such a design enables LIT to demonstrate multiple advantages in terms of analytical sensitivity, speed, and throughput. It detects analyte concentrations as low as fg/ml, representing a sensitivity improvement of two orders of magnitude over Luminex. Incubation time is reduced to 15 minutes from Luminex's 210 minutes. Furthermore, LIT requires only 10 µl of sample, one-fifth of what Luminex needs. This makes LIT ideal for rapid diagnostics and studies with limited biological samples, greatly expanding its application scope.
高通量免疫分析对于科学和临床应用都越来越重要。在此,我们提出一种“尖端实验室”(LIT)概念,以制造一种包含高密度蛋白质阵列和其他必需试剂的移液器吸头。蛋白质阵列是通过在经过修饰的吸头内自组装数字编码的微粒制成的。安装在机器人工作站上,它可实现液体处理步骤的自动化。值得注意的是,与多重免疫分析的当前金标准Luminex相比,这种设计使LIT在分析灵敏度、速度和通量方面展现出多种优势。它能检测低至fg/ml的分析物浓度,比Luminex的灵敏度提高了两个数量级。孵育时间从Luminex的210分钟减少到15分钟。此外,LIT仅需10µl样品,是Luminex所需样品量的五分之一。这使得LIT非常适合用于快速诊断以及对生物样品有限的研究,极大地扩展了其应用范围。