Antibody-based magnetic nanoparticle immunoassay for quantification of Alzheimer’s disease pathogenic factor

Abstract. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to a decline in cognitive and intellectual abilities and an irreversible mental deterioration. Based on multidisciplinary AD research, the most universally accepted hypotheses on AD pathogenesis are the intracerebral aggregate formation of beta-amyloid (Aβ) peptides. According to medical paradigmatic transition from medical treatment to early diagnostic prevention, scientists have considered physiological body fluid as a biomarker medium, in which the promising AD biomarkers could be verified. Recently, use of saliva has been considered as one of the diagnostic fluids over the past decade with meaningful diagnostic potential. We utilized saliva as a biomarker medium to correlate the salivary Aβ levels to AD pathological aspects, especially to the mild cognitive impairment group among AD patients, and to verify our detecting system to be sensitive enough for an early diagnostic tool. The identification of the salivary AD biomarkers using a facile microarraying method would motivate this study with the assistance of magnetically assembled antibody-conjugated nanoparticles and a photomultiplier tube as an optical detector. This simple magnetoimmunoassay system measures the photointensity generated by fluorescence, enables the quantification of the Aβ peptides from AD salivary samples, and consequently classifies the salivary Aβ levels into AD pathological aspects. This method demonstrates a facile approach enabling it to simply detect salivary Aβ peptides at a concentration as low as ∼20  pg/ml. It is expected that our simple magnetoimmunoassay system may have a potential as a detector for low-level Aβ peptides with weak-fluorescence emission.