Biomarker quantification at clinically relevant concentrations using metal enhanced fluorescence combined with surface acoustic waves

Immunofluorescence assays are commonly used for the detection of proteins and antigens. The problems with these types of assays are that they suffer from weak fluorescence signals causing poor detection limits, background signals cause “noise” and falsepositives, and attachment times of antigens to antibody are fairly slow. In this work, metal-enhanced fluorescence was used to strengthen the fluorescence signal by a factor as large as 1000 and surface acoustic wave devices were used to remove background signals from non-specifically bound proteins and speed up the rate of attachment by a factor of six. These two were then combined to prove that these two phenomena can coexist.