Multiplexed Immunoassay: Quantitation and Profiling of Serum Biomarkers Using Magnetic Nanoprobes and MALDI-TOF MS

Taking advantage of efficient affinity extraction by surface-functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and accurate MALDI-TOF MS readout, we present a multiplexed immunoassay for simultaneous enrichment and quantitation of multiple disease-associated antigens, serum amyloid A (SAA), C-reactive protein (CRP), and serum amyloid P (SAP) from human serum. To obtain reproducible MALDI signal response with direct on-MNP detection, the seed-layer method improved homogeneity of the cocrystallization of MNPs and captured antigens. Our methodology demonstrated good quantitation linearity of targeted analytes (R2 ≈ 0.97) with reduced signal variation (RSD < 10%). The lower limit of quantitation is in the nanogram level with overall assay precision (intraday, 7.0%; interday, 11.3%) and accuracy (intraday, 6.3%; interday, 17.5%) including steps of nanoprobe extraction and MALDI-TOF MS analysis. This triplexed immunoassay showed overexpression of SAA and CRP in patients with cardiac catheterization or gastric cancer...