SYNTHESIS OF LATEX PARTICLES BY EMULSION AND DISPERSION POLYMERIZATION FOR DETECTING LEPTOSPIROSIS

GUGLIOTTA, LUIS M.; GONZALEZ, VERÓNICA D.G.; PERETTI, LEANDRO E

CABA

Simposio; Simposio Argentino de Polímeros 2019; 2019

The controlled synthesis of polymer nanoparticles is of great interest in the production of latexes with well defined characteristics. These products can be applied in biomedicine as carriers of biomolecules (eg proteins, enzymes), and in particular as latexes for immunoassays used for example in immunoagglutination tests, which allow amplifying the antigen-antibody reaction, being simple, quick and inexpensive diagnostic tools. The synthesis of polystyrene (PS) latex particles in the 100-1100 nm diameter range, by either emulsion (EP) or dispersion polymerization (DP), is here considered. Changes in the polymerization recipes and batch or semibatch operations were analyzed. Finally, latexes were employed to obtain latex-protein complexes (LPC) which were tested as agglutination test for detecting leptospirosis disease in bovine samples.