Carboxyl Colored Particles for Immunochromatography Applications

FEMIA, ANABELA L.; GONZALEZ, VERÓNICA D.G.; GUGLIOTTA, LUIS M.

Simposio; XIII Simposio Argentino de Polimeros; 2019

Diagnosis of different diseases is a major issue nowadays in the field of preventive medicine. Many infections are mostly diagnosed when specific antibodies (Ab) against the respective antigens (Ag) are detected in an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), indirect immunofluorescence (IFI) or indirect hemagglutination (HAI). An alternative detection method is the immunochromatography test, which requires the coupling of an antigen or antibody to colored particles.Recently, our group published a work on a simple synthesis of colored particles from a new polymerizable dye, produced on the basis of basic fuchsine (BF) and glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) named BF-GMA (Femia, 2019). Main advantages of such particles in immunochromatography are specificity, rapidness, simplicity and direct visualization.Functionalized polymer particles are widely used nowadays, and the amount of uses involved increases every day. In particular, polymer latexes accomplish the requirements (particle size, nature of surface groups and charge density) needed to be applied in immunochromatography test. Latex particles can be functionalized with many different chemical or biological groups, such as charged, reactive, hydrophilicity, and many other ones.To such purpose, reactions aiming to obtain colored particles functionalized with carboxylic groups are introduced in this work, varying the reaction conditions in order to assess the impact of this new reactive (BF-GMA) on conversion, reaction rate, surface charge density and the amount of dye incorporated. Variables to assay are the amount of surfactant, the ratio among styrene and methacrylic acid monomers and the use of dye without any chemical modification. Through these simple modifications, a way to obtain stable, functionalized colored particles in the size range between 85 and 280 nm will be described. This fact enables potential industrial interest, and the application to immunochromatography.Also, functionalized colored latex particles obtained were sensitized with BSA, and such latex-BSA complexes were characterized for size, total protein bound and Z potential.