International Journal on Magnetic Particle Imaging IJMPI
Vol. 9 No. 1 Suppl 1 (2023): Int J Mag Part Imag
Low-cost standalone magnetic particle spectroscopy device for fast and sensitive immunoassays
Main Article Content
Abstract
The recent pandemic has shown how important reliable assays are for determining whether someone is infectious. One promising alternative to the established testing methods are immunoassays with magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) markers using magnetic particle spectroscopy (MPS). In this work we present the development of our “immunoMPS” which was especially built at low cost for immunoassays with infectious samples. It is a completely self-contained, mobile device with total costs of only 300€ that could be used in S2+ laboratories. The device delivers high performance on par or exceeding our lab equipment. Thus, we achieved a significantly lower limit of detection (LOD) of 4x10^8 viruses/mL of our magnetic immunoassays (MIAs) for the detection of mimic SARS-CoV-2 which is about one order of magnitude better than previous results in this research topic. In addition, it is possible to further improve the limit by optimizing the experimental setup and using DC fields.