Absolute Quantification of Bionanoparticles by Electrospray Differential Mobility Analysis: An Application to Lipoprotein Particle Concentration Measurements.

This study presents an upgraded electrospray differential mobility analysis (ES-DMA) setup for the absolute quantification of bionanoparticle concentrations in biological samples, with a special focus on non-high-density-lipoprotein particle concentrations (non-HDL-P). Metrological characterization of the system's analytical performances for concentration measurements shows that the mean intermediate precision relative standard deviation is 14% for biological samples, 6% for silica nanoparticles, and less than 1% for diameter measurements. This study also demonstrates that the most accurate method for non-HDL-P quantification in native serum samples implies daily calculation of the electrospray transmission efficiency (E) of the system with the WHO SP3-08 reference material. The establishment of the uncertainty budget reveals that the main contribution to particle concentration measurement uncertainties is the electrospray transmission efficiency. This data additionally shows that E is not only low (approximately 15-20%) but also highly variable over time and strongly affected by sample composition. This work suggests that absolute enumeration of bionanoparticles is achievable with ES-DMA but provided that a special care is taken to quantifying E with a calibrator of nature and matrix highly similar to the samples ones.