Abstract

Green/sustainable cellulose paper-based platforms at point-of-care testing have received much interest in biomedical fields at resource-limited settings. In such platforms, biomolecules would have to be immobilized onto paper substrate to achieve detection. Therefore, effective molecule immobilization is critical for the performance of paper-based testing, especially the detection sensitivity. Although various methods have been developed to improve the detection sensitivity, the immobilization capacity of biomolecules has not been considered yet. In this study, we developed a facile method for modifying paper materials by incorporating chitosan into NC membrane, which has positive effect on the pore size, porosity, and surface groups of NC membrane, hence, enhancing the immobilization capacity of biomolecules on paper substrate. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the above mentioned approach by using nucleic acid lateral flow assay (NALFAs) as a model paper-based platform; in comparison with the unmodified NALFAs, the results showed ten-fold increase in the detection sensitivity for HBV. We envision that this facile modification method will have a great potential for developing other highly sensitive paper-based detecting platforms.

Graphic abstract

摘要

基于即时医疗的绿色/可持续纤维素纸平台在资源有限的环境中已经引起了生物医学领域的极大兴趣。在这样的平台上，必须将生物分子固定在纸质基质上才能实现检测。因此，有效的分子固定对于纸基测试的性能，尤其是检测灵敏度至关重要。尽管已经开发了各种方法来提高检测灵敏度，但是尚未考虑生物分子的固定能力。在这项研究中，我们开发了一种通过将壳聚糖掺入NC膜中来修饰纸材料的简便方法，该方法对NC膜的孔径，孔隙率和表面基团具有积极作用，因此，增强了生物分子在纸基材上的固定能力。我们通过使用核酸侧向流动分析（NALFA）作为基于纸张的模型平台，证明了上述方法的有效性；与未修饰的NALFA相比，结果表明，对HBV的检测灵敏度提高了十倍。我们预想，这种简便的修改方法将具有开发其他高度敏感的基于纸张的检测平台的巨大潜力。

图形摘要