Microfluidic biosensor for beta-amyloid(1-42) detection using cyclic voltammetry.

Numerous studies have identified beta-amyloid(1-42) protein (Abeta42) in the cerebrospinal fluid as a potential biomarker of Alzheimer's disease. It is of particular interest to establish the diagnosis before reaching the stage of clinical severity. The current methods for studying amyloid detection, however, is often time-consuming, expensive, and labor intensive, making the analytical process very slow. Thus, a critical need exists for an analytical system that would enable the rapid investigation of amyloid formation with a very small amount of amyloidogenic peptides and reagents. In our present work, we report a simple microfluidic biosensor to analyze very small quantities of Abeta42 peptide on gold surface that were modified with Au nano-particles onto the thiol groups of self-assembled 1,6-hexandithiol cross-linkers. The vital advantage of this method includes retaining the bioactivity and environment similar to nature for protein immobilization while using minimal amounts of reagents and highly sensitive detection.