Depletion of Highly Abundant Protein Species from Biosamples by the Use of a Branched Silicon Nanopillar On-Chip Platform

Abstract

Highly abundant serum proteins tend to mask the low-and ultralow-abundance proteins, making low-abundance species detection extremely challenging. While traditional highly abundant protein depletion techniques are effective, they suffer from nonspecific binding problems and laborious sample manipulation procedures, and the kinetics of release of current separation systems is inadequately long, causing dilution of the eluted low-abundance protein samples. Here, we introduce an onchip light-controlled reusable platform for the direct and fast depletion of highly abundant proteins from serum biosamples. Our nanoarrays display fast and highly selective depletion capabilities, up to 99% depletion of highly abundant protein species, with no undesired depletion effects on the concentration of low-abundance protein biomarkers. Displaying an ultrahigh surface area, ∼3400 m 2 g −1 , alongside a light-triggerable ultrafast release, this platform allows for a high depletion performance, together with high-yield reusability capabilities. Furthermore, this nanostructured light-controlled separation device could easily be integrated with downstream analytical technologies in a single lab-on-a-chip platform.

Candidate protein biomarkers in chronic kidney disease: a proteomics study

“…Analyzing proteomes in complex biological samples is difficult, primarily because of the wide range of protein concentrations. In plasma, for instance, highly abundant proteins such as immunoglobulins and albumin, which can vary by over 10 orders of magnitude in concentration, can obscure the detection of low-abundant proteins, complicating the effectiveness of the MS method 26 . Similarly, the masking effect of highly abundant proteins can be observed when analyzing the urinary proteome of CKD patients, who have elevated levels of urinary albumin and other abundant proteins, making the identification of low-concentration urinary proteins challenging 27 , 28 .…”

Synergetic enhancing effects between platinum nano-sensitizers and clinically approved stabilizing ligands in proton therapy, causing high-yield double-strand breaks of plasmid DNA at relevant dose

“…License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 aggregation. [55] We added different concentrations of BSA in the micromolar range to the PtNP colloids after synthesis in the concentration range of 0.01 to 18 µM and investigated the colloidal stability by salt stress tests in a physiological saline solution. Figure 2D shows the results of the experiment after 14 days.…”

Transdermal Minimally-Invasive Optical Multiplex Detection of Protein Biomarkers by Microneedles-Embedded Nanopillars Array

“…In a prior study conducted by our group, the remarkable efficacy of vertical arrays of silicon nanopillars (SiNPs) for the rapid separation and sensing of target proteins from complex bio-samples was https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-qdcrw ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2398-4829 Content not peer-reviewed by ChemRxiv. License: CC BY 4.0 demonstrated [35][36][37] . The SiNPs platform was created via metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE), to create a stable nanostructured surface directly from a silicon wafer.…”

“…This results in a substantially lower mean-free path for the proteins, forcing them to linger inside the cavities as they are being repeatedly adsorbed to the surface-anchored antibodies on the pillar surfaces within the limited inter-pillars region. Hence, improving the accessibility of analytes to the sensing elements, amplifying their sensitivity 35 .…”