An Electrochemical Metalloimmunoassay Based on a Colloidal Gold Label

Abstract

A novel, sensitive electrochemical immunoassay has been developed using a colloidal gold label that, after oxidative gold metal dissolution in an acidic solution, was indirectly determined by anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV) at a single-use carbon-based screen-printed electrode (SPE). The use of disposable electrodes allows for simplified measurement in 35 μL of solution. The method was evaluated for a noncompetitive heterogeneous immunoassay of an immunoglobulin G (IgG) and a concentration as low as 3 × 10^-12 M was determined, which is competitive with colorimetric ELISA or with immunoassays based on fluorescent europium chelate labels. The high performance of the method is related to the sensitive ASV determination of gold(III) at a SPE (detection limit of 5 × 10^-9 M) and to the release of a large number of gold(III) ions from each gold particle anchored on the immunocomplex (e.g., 1.7 × 10⁵ gold atoms are theoretically contained in a 18-nm spherical gold particle).