Recently, Ph.D. student Yan Gong from BEBC, cooperated with Professor John C. Bischof from the University of Minnesota, published a research paper entitled " The role of nanoparticle design in determining analytical performance of lateral flow immunoassays " on Nano letters.

In this paper, a rational and systematic strategy is used to design the LFA contrast label (i.e. gold nanoparticle) to improve the analytical sensitivity, analytical detection range and antigen quantification of LFAs. Specifically, they discovered that the size (30, 60 or 100 nm) of the gold nanoparticle is a main contributor to the LFA analytical performance through both the degree of receptor interaction and the ultimate visual or thermal contrast signals. Using the optimal LFA design, they demonstrated the ability to improve the analytical sensitivity by 256-fold and expand analytical detection range from 3 log₁₀ to 6 log₁₀ for diagnosing patients with inflammatory conditions by measuring C-reactive protein. This work demonstrates that with appropriate design of the contrast label, a simple and commonly used diagnostic technology can compete with more expensive state-of-the-art laboratory tests.

The work is under the guidance of Professor Feng Xu. The co-authors of the paper include Li Zhan, Shuang Zhuang Guo, Fayi Song, David R. Boulware, Michael C. McAlpine, Warren C.W. Chan, and John C Bischof.

Link of the artical:http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b02302