Rapid optofluidic detection of biomarkers for traumatic brain injury via surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.
Jonathan James Stanley RickardValentina Di-PietroDavid J SmithDavid J DaviesAntonio BelliPola Goldberg OppenheimerPublished in: Nature biomedical engineering (2020)
Current technologies for the point-of-care diagnosis of traumatic brain injury (TBI) lack sensitivity, require specialist handling or involve complicated and costly procedures. Here, we report the development and testing of an optofluidic device for the rapid and label-free detection, via surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), of picomolar concentrations of biomarkers for TBI in biofluids. The SERS-active substrate of the device consists of electrohydrodynamically fabricated submicrometre pillars covered with a plasmon-active nanometric gold layer, integrated in an optofluidic chip. We show that the device can detect N-acetylasparate in finger-prick blood samples from patients with TBI, and that the biomarker is released immediately from the central nervous system after TBI. The simplicity, sensitivity and robustness of SERS-integrated optofluidic technology might eventually help the triaging of TBI patients and assist clinical decision making at point-of-care settings.
Keyphrases
- traumatic brain injury
- label free
- raman spectroscopy
- loop mediated isothermal amplification
- sensitive detection
- severe traumatic brain injury
- end stage renal disease
- decision making
- gold nanoparticles
- ejection fraction
- newly diagnosed
- chronic kidney disease
- peritoneal dialysis
- palliative care
- real time pcr
- quantum dots
- single cell
- amino acid
- silver nanoparticles