A new immunochemistry platform for a guideline-compliant cardiac troponin T assay at the point of care: proof of principle

Background:

A multitude of troponin assays for the point-of-care (POC) have been developed showing a lack of analytical sensitivity and precision. We present a new platform solution for the high-sensitivity detection of cardiac troponin T (cTnT) in a 30 μL whole blood sample with a turnaround time of 11 min.

Methods:

The immunoassay was completely run in a ready-to-use plastic disposable, a centrifugal microfluidic disc with fully integrated reagents. After the sample application, the assay was automatically processed by separating the cellular blood components via centrifugation, followed by incubation of a defined volume from the generated plasma with the immunoreagents. The fluorescence in the signal zone of a membrane was measured after its washing for the cTnT quantitation.

Results:

A calibration curve, measured in whole blood samples spiked with native human cTnT, was generated covering a range up to a concentration of approximately 8300 ng/L. The lower detection limit was determined to be 3.0 ng/L. At a concentration of 14 ng/L, the 99th percentile value from the high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) assay in the Elecsys

Conclusions:

The described technology shows that an analytical performance for a highly sensitive determination of cTnT can be achieved in a POC setting.

A fully integrated microfluidic platform for highly sensitive analysis of immunochemical parameters

A fully integrated cartridge for highly sensitive immunochemical analysis of cardiac markers with new microfluidic functionalities is presented.

Relationship between chain length, disorder, and resistivity in polypyrrole films

The effects of the polymerization temperature and of voltammetric cycling on the chain length and the resistivity of polypyrrole films are investigated. The studies provide further proof for the existence of at least two different types of polypyrrole, the so-called PPy I and PPy II. As the electropolymerization of conjugated systems in contrast to normal polymerization reactions is a fully activated process, the generation of these different types of PPy depends on experimental parameters such as temperature or formation potentials. UV-vis measurements demonstrate that PPy II comprises significantly shorter chains than PPy I (8-12 vs 32-64 units); moreover, film conductivity is found to increase with the fraction of PPy II. This fraction is changed via the polymerization temperature as well as by cyclic voltammetry, both of which can induce a metal-insulator transition. The counter-intuitive relationship between resistivity and chain length is interpreted in terms of disorder-dominated transport, in which the shorter chains of PPy II support the formation of delocalized electronic states, thereby increasing the localization length. Thus, our results are in agreement with recent broadband reflectivity measurements.

Porphyrin–acetylene–thiophene polymer wires

5,15-Bis[acetylene-4-(ethylenedioxy)thiophene]-10,20-bis(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin was synthesized by a Sonogashira coupling and polymerized to fibres; TEM and AFM images show uniform porphyrin wires with a length of several micrometers and a thickness of less than 4 nm.