Pulsating Bead-Based Assay

摘要

ABSTRACT: In recent years, there has been a growing interest innusing porous microbeads such as agarose beads as solid supports tonbind targetmolecules fromcomplex fluid samples. Porous beads havenlarge surface area to volume ratios and high receptor concentrations,nand they facilitate relatively high sensitivity detection and multi-nplexing. Unfortunately, to take full advantage of the porous beads’nattributes, long incubation times are needed due to the relatively slownmass transfer of target molecules from the exterior solution into thenbeads’ interior. To accelerate the mass transfer process, we propose a novel assay in which functionalized porous beads arenperiodically compressed and expanded. Preliminary experiments were carried out to compare the performance of the pulsatingnbeads with that of conventional, nonpulsating beads. These experiments indicate that the pulsating beads significantly acceleratenbinding rates with minimal increase in nonspecific binding. Thus, pulsing has the potential of significantly reducing assay time.