SERS based protocol using flow glass-hemostix for detection of neuron-specific enolase in blood plasma

An inexpensive and disposable lateral flow glass-hemostix (FGH) has been developed as an immunoassay, in which surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is utilized for sensing signal transduction. Gold nanocage@Raman reporter nanoparticles are developed as SERS tags, which is the key to the high sensitivity of the device. Compared with ELISA, the SERS-FGH exhibits superior performance in terms of sensitivity and limit of detection (LOD) in a blood plasma-containing sample matrix. In addition, the SERS-FGH has been successfully used for the detection of neuron-specific enolase (NSE), a traumatic brain injury (TBI) protein biomarker, in diluted blood plasma samples, achieving a LOD of 0.74 ng mL−1. Moreover, the SERS-FGH was successfully employed to measure the NSE level in clinical blood plasma samples taken from identified TBI patients. This work demonstrates that the SERS-FGH has great potential in assisting screening of TBI patients in the point-of-care setting.