Enhancement of lateral flow assay performance by electromagnetic relocation of reporter particles

Maria João Jacinto; João R.C. Trabuco; Binh V. Vu; Gavin Garvey; Mohammad Khodadady; Ana M. Azevedo; Maria Raquel Aires-Barros; Long Chang; Katerina Kourentzi; Dmitri Litvinov; Richard C. Willson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186782

Enhancement of lateral flow assay performance by electromagnetic relocation of reporter particles

Maria João Jacinto, João R.C. Trabuco, Binh V. Vu, Gavin Garvey, Mohammad Khodadady, Ana M. Azevedo, Maria Raquel Aires-Barros, Long Chang, Katerina Kourentzi, Dmitri Litvinov, Richard C. Willson

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Lateral flow assays (LFAs) are a widely-used point-of care diagnostic format, but suffer from limited analytical sensitivity, especially when read by eye. It has recently been reported that LFA performance can be improved by using magnetic reporter particles and an external magnetic field applied at the test line. The mechanism of sensitivity/performance enhancement was suggested to be concentration/retardation of reporter particles at the test line. Here we demonstrate an additional mechanism of particle relocation where reporter particles from the lower depths of the translucent LFA strip relocate to more-visible locations nearer to the top surface, producing a more visible signal. With a magnetic field we observed an improvement in sensitivity of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) detection from 1.25 ng/mL to 0.31 ng/mL. We also observed an increase of the color intensity per particle in test lines when the magnetic field was present.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	e0186782
Pages (from-to)	e0186782
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	13
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186782
State	Published - Jan 2018

Keywords

Antibodies/immunology
Chorionic Gonadotropin/analysis
Electromagnetic Fields
Limit of Detection
Serum Albumin, Bovine/analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
General
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)

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title = "Enhancement of lateral flow assay performance by electromagnetic relocation of reporter particles",

abstract = "Lateral flow assays (LFAs) are a widely-used point-of care diagnostic format, but suffer from limited analytical sensitivity, especially when read by eye. It has recently been reported that LFA performance can be improved by using magnetic reporter particles and an external magnetic field applied at the test line. The mechanism of sensitivity/performance enhancement was suggested to be concentration/retardation of reporter particles at the test line. Here we demonstrate an additional mechanism of particle relocation where reporter particles from the lower depths of the translucent LFA strip relocate to more-visible locations nearer to the top surface, producing a more visible signal. With a magnetic field we observed an improvement in sensitivity of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) detection from 1.25 ng/mL to 0.31 ng/mL. We also observed an increase of the color intensity per particle in test lines when the magnetic field was present.",

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AU - Jacinto, Maria João

AU - Trabuco, João R.C.

AU - Vu, Binh V.

AU - Garvey, Gavin

AU - Khodadady, Mohammad

AU - Azevedo, Ana M.

AU - Aires-Barros, Maria Raquel

AU - Chang, Long

AU - Kourentzi, Katerina

AU - Litvinov, Dmitri

AU - Willson, Richard C.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Jacinto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

PY - 2018/1

Y1 - 2018/1

N2 - Lateral flow assays (LFAs) are a widely-used point-of care diagnostic format, but suffer from limited analytical sensitivity, especially when read by eye. It has recently been reported that LFA performance can be improved by using magnetic reporter particles and an external magnetic field applied at the test line. The mechanism of sensitivity/performance enhancement was suggested to be concentration/retardation of reporter particles at the test line. Here we demonstrate an additional mechanism of particle relocation where reporter particles from the lower depths of the translucent LFA strip relocate to more-visible locations nearer to the top surface, producing a more visible signal. With a magnetic field we observed an improvement in sensitivity of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) detection from 1.25 ng/mL to 0.31 ng/mL. We also observed an increase of the color intensity per particle in test lines when the magnetic field was present.

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Enhancement of lateral flow assay performance by electromagnetic relocation of reporter particles

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