An Electrochemical Immunosensor with PEDOT: PSS/MWCNTs-COOH Nanocomposites as a Modified Working Electrode Material for Detecting Tau-441

Abstract

The progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is positively correlated with the phosphorylation damage of Tau-441 protein, which is the marker with the most potential for the early detection of AD. The low content of Tau-441 in human serum is a major difficulty for the realization of content detection. Herein, we prepared an electrochemical immunosensor modified with Poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene)-poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT: PSS)/Carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNTs-COOH) nanocomposites based on electrochemical immunoassay technology for the low-concentration detection of Tau-441. The immunosensor based on the nanocomposite can take advantage of the characteristics of conductive polymers to achieve electrical signal amplification and use MWCNTs-COOH to increase the contact area of the active site and bond with the Tau-441 antibodies on the electrode. The physicochemical and electrical properties of PEDOT: PSS/MWCNTs-COOH were studied by in situ characterization techniques and electrochemical characterization methods, indicating that the immunosensor has high selectivity and sensitivity to the Tau-441 immune reaction. Under optimized optimal conditions, the electrochemical immunosensor detected a range of concentrations of Tau-441 to obtain a low detection of limit (0.0074 ng mL−1) and demonstrated good detection performance through actual human serum sample testing experiments. Therefore, the study provides an effective reference value for the early diagnosis of AD.