Invasive Aspergillosis (IA) is a major cause of morbidity/mortality in immunosuppressed patients. Early detection of Aspergillus antigens is beneficial for promptly initiating antifungal therapy and thus improving clinical outcomes from IA. This study describes the development of a SERS immunoassay to detect Aspergillus antigen GM in serum, based on a commercially available antibody (mAb WF-AF-1). The recognized antigen epitope of mAb WF-AF-1 was found to be the galactofuranose group of GM, which was confirmed by periodate oxidation, enzyme digestion, and mild acid hydrolysis followed by GC-MS. After optimizing the preparation of gold capture address and extrinsic Raman labels and developing a sample preparation procedure, the limits of detection for GM in serum was determined to be as low as 1 ng/mL. To further improve clinical sensitivity and specificity for IA diagnosis, ongoing work is focusing on simultaneous detection of multiple Aspergillus antigens based on our SERS nanobiosensor platform.

Detection of <i>Aspergillus</i> antigen galactomannan (GM) in serum by surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) based nanobiosensor

245th National Meeting (2013)

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Detection of Aspergillus antigen galactomannan (GM) in serum by surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) based nanobiosensor