Scientific Publications by FDA Staff

RSC Adv 2017;7(32):19863-77

Fluorescent silver nanoparticle based highly sensitive immunoassay for early detection of HIV infection.

Kurdekar AD, Chunduri LAA, Chelli SM, Haleyurgirisetty MK, Bulagonda EP, Zheng JW, Hewlett IK, Kamisetti V

For the first time, we have engineered streptavidin labeled fluorescent silver nanoparticles for their application in immunosensing of biomolecules which will significantly increase sensitivity without compromising the specificity. A computational perspective for understanding the efficiency of the conjugation process is provided as a proof of concept. The fluorescence based sandwich immunoassay was demonstrated to detect HIV-1 p24 antigen in clinical specimens with improved sensitivity and specificity. The detection range of the fluorescent silver nanoparticle-based immunoassay (FSNIA) was found to be between 10 and 1000 pg mL(1) in a linear dose dependent manner. False positives were not observed with plasma samples from healthy adults (HIV-ve), hepatitis B (HBV+ve) and hepatitis C (HCV+ve). Plasma samples that were HIV-ve showed no interference with detection of HIV-1 p24 antigen. This technology can be used in resource limited settings and easily adopted for the detection of other pathogen antigens.