Development of a Portable Electrical Immunoassay Device

A portable immunoassay device is developed in this project. A novel electrical immunoassay technique is proposed for the detection method in this portable device. Immunoassay is commonly used in many clinical, pharmaceutical, and scientific research laboratories for diagnostics. However, most of the state-of-the-art immunoassay systems are based on fluorescent detection method. It has the advantage of high sensitivity, but requires dedicated optical equipment which has the limitation of miniaturization. The proposed electrical technique can determine the immunoassay result using a relatively simple electrical circuit. Therefore, it can be developed to a miniaturized detector for immunoassay. Incorporating microfluidic technology, a portable immunoassay device is proposed to handle most of the biological reaction processes automatically. It is not only to reduce the tedious biological process but also standardize the reaction conditions in each analysis. Moreover, since the sensitivity and specificity of immunoassay are important indexes for the development of diagnostic equipment, investigation of the sensitivity and specificity of electrical immunoassay is performed and the system can be optimized. Finally, a performance comparison of the proposed electrical immunoassay and the conventional fluorescent immunoassay is conducted. The fluorescent result can be a benchmark to qualify the electrical immunoassay. The technology development in this proposal is a platform technology and it is compatible to most of the commercial immunoassay reagent kits for disease diagnostics, e.g., human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis, malaria, etc. The developed device is suitable for many field applications such as food plant, clinic, border, etc.

Project ID:PB9912-1006
External Project ID:NSC99-2218-E182-008