A novel signal amplified sandwich aptamer-based visual lateral flow assay based on self-assembly bifunctional nucleic acid for rapid and sensitive detection of CKMB

At present, rapid and sensitive detection of disease biomarkers is still the focus of early clinical diagnosis. As a rapid response to point-of-care testing (POCT), lateral flow assay (LFA) has been given serious attention. Unfortunately, due to the sensitivity limitations, LFA, especially AuNPs-based LFA, was difficult to play an important role in the detection of trace biomarkers. The combination of different signal amplification methods increases the complexity of operation and use, or prolongs the detection time, which sacrifices the advantages of fast and convenient of LFA. Hence, a novel sandwich aptamer-based visual LFA based on bifunctional nucleic acid (bFNA-LFA) was proposed for rapid and sensitive detection of creatine kinase MB (CKMB) in this study. Based on hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and nucleic acid hybridization, a bifunctional nucleic acid with target recognition and signal amplification was prepared, which effectively improved the sensitivity of CKMB detection without increasing the reaction time and depending on the detecting equipment. Under optimal reaction conditions, the limit of detection of 7.92 ng/mL was observed, which was 20 times lower than that of sandwich aptamer-based AuNPs LFA in the previous study. The proposed bFNA-LFA assay expanded a new idea in improving the sensitivity of LFA, and provided a reference for the subsequent application of nucleic acid nanomaterials in the detection of protein biomarkers.