Reusable, Noninvasive, and Sensitive Fluorescence Enhanced ZnO-Nanorod-Based Microarrays for Quantitative Detection of AFP in Human Serum

The fabrication of sensitive protein microarrays such as PCR used in DNA microarray is challenging due to lack of signal amplification. The development of microarrays is utilized to improve the sensitivity and limitations of detection towards primal cancer detection. The sensitivity is enhanced by the use of ZnO-nanorods and is investigated as a substrate which enhance the florescent signal to diagnose the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) at early stages. The substrate for deposition of ZnO-nanorods is prepared by the conventional chemical bath deposition method. The resultant highly dense ZnO-nanorods enhance the fluorescent signal 7.2 times as compared to the substrate without ZnO-nanorods. The microarray showed sensitivity of 1504.7 ng ml-1 and limit of detection of 0.1 pg ml-1 in wide dynamic range of 0.05 pg-10 μg ml-1 for alpha fetoprotein (AFP) detection in 10% human serum. This immunoassay was successfully applied for human serum samples to detect tumor marker with good recoveries. The ZnO-nanorod substrate is a simple protein microarray which showed a great promise for developing a low-cost, sensitive, and high-throughput protein assay platform for several applications in both fundamental research and clinical diagnosis.