Non-specific adsorption of serum and cell lysate on 3D biosensor platforms: A comparative study based on SPRi

Abstract Comparative study for non-specific adsorption of cell lysate and serum on recently developed biosensor surfaces is reported. Different surface chemistries including, polyethylene glycol (PEG), α-cyclodextrin (CD), hydrogel dextran and surface initiated polymerization (SIP) based gold surfaces were taken into account for this study. Various techniques including, surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization tandem time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI−TOF/TOF MS) technique to evaluate the surfaces with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) for the confirmation of surface fabrication were used. A high non-specific adsorption response of cell lysate and serum was observed on these so-called non-fouling surfaces. The obtained results from this comparative study provided some hope to explore SIP and dextran surface as a universal platform for biosensor applications. SIP produced best result and showed high sensitivity and minimum non-specific adsorption. We believe that this comparative study will surely help the researchers to further upgrade these surfaces and especially SIP to make it more universal for biosensor microarray applications including biomarker discovery in high throughput format.