Enhanced Plasmonic Biosensor Utilizing Paired Antibody and Label-Free Fe3O4 Nanoparticles for Highly Sensitive and Selective Detection of Parkinson’s α-Synuclein in Serum

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an acute and progressive neurodegenerative disorder, and diagnosis of the disease at its earliest stage is of paramount importance to improve the life expectancy of patients. α-Synuclein (α-syn) is a potential biomarker for the early diagnosis of PD, and there is a great need to develop a biosensing platform that precisely detects α-syn in human body fluids. Herein, we developed a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor based on the label-free iron oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4 NPs) and paired antibody for the highly sensitive and selective detection of α-syn in serum samples. The sensitivity of the SPR platform is enhanced significantly by directly depositing Fe3O4 NPs on the Au surface at a high density to increase the decay length of the evanescent field on the Au film. Moreover, the utilization of rabbit-type monoclonal antibody (α-syn-RmAb) immobilized on Au films allows the SPR platform to have a high affinity-selectivity binding performance compared to mouse-type monoclonal antibodies as a common bioreceptor for capturing α-syn molecules. As a result, the current platform has a detection limit of 5.6 fg/mL, which is 20,000-fold lower than that of commercial ELISA. The improved sensor chip can also be easily regenerated to repeat the α-syn measurement with the same sensitivity. Furthermore, the SPR sensor was applied to the direct analysis of α-syn in serum samples. By using a format of paired α-syn-RmAb, the SPR sensor provides a recovery rate in the range from 94.5% to 104.3% to detect the α-syn in diluted serum samples precisely. This work demonstrates a highly sensitive and selective quantification approach to detect α-syn in human biofluids and paves the way for the future development in the early diagnosis of PD.