Advances in micro/nanofabrication technologies are enabling the development of mechanical devices with nanosized moving parts. Micro/nanocantilever sensors respond to changes on their surface with a mechanical bending in the order of nanometers which can easily be detected. For sensing applications, when a specific biomolecular binding like protein-protein interactions occurs on one surface of the microcantilever, a change of the surface stress is induced. The oriented immobilization of antiperoxidase from horseradish antibody on a microcantilever was used as model and the specific antigen-antibody interaction was detected by a simple and fast measurement of the microcantilever profile in air for the first time. 3000 measurements conducted to statistically significant results. This specific and sensitive protein biosensor is a potential candidate for the detection of disease-related proteins at clinically relevant conditions and concentrations. Unfortunatelly, label-free protein biosensors still present poor reproducibility and specific immobilization methods must be developed relying on high throughput methodologies.

Critical role of protein immobilization in micro and nanomechanical biosensors

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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