PROTEIN MICROARRAY BIOCHIP IMMUNOASSAY METHOD AND A LOW COST DETECTION SYSTEM

摘要

ABSTRACT "A protein microarray Biochip immunoassay method and a low cost detection system" is disclosed. The said method is useful for the detection of multiple disease markers in human serum and body fluids. The Chip consist of a nitrocellulose membrane substrate or a PVDF membrane fixed to a glass surface or a silinated glass slide onto which proteins are spotted using a non contact piezoelectric microarray printer. The array surface in enclosed in a casing which form a reaction chamber(Fig 1). The invention also describes about a loading rnechanism(Fig 6)for the above chip into a chip scanner(Fig 8 &10). The present invention also discloses the method of using the said chip, for the quality control of donor blood in blood banks (Fig 5), detection of fever causing pathogens and detection of ToRCH antibodies in pregnant woman. The assay is based on an enzyme immunoassay using Alkaline phosphatase or Peroxidase conjugates . The protein binding was further visualized by substrates like BCIP-NBT or TMB substrate which will give microspots on reacted sites which are detected by an imaging device (Fig 10). The specific information about the array including disease-spot mapping is encoded using a multidimensional bar code attached to the chip. The imaging system described is a CCD based image scanner (Fig 8, 9,10) using a image analysis software program. The method is easy to operate, rapid than the conventional ELISA, accurate and suitable for detecting multiple diseases especially in large scale screening of Blood samples.