AVS 51st International Symposium
    Biomaterial Interfaces Thursday Sessions
       Session BI-ThA

Paper BI-ThA8
Detection of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 Using Micro-Cantilever Deflection Biosensors

Thursday, November 18, 2004, 4:20 pm, Room 210D

Session: Biosensors and Bio-Diagnostics
Presenter: N. Abu-Lail, Duke University
Authors: Y. Lam, Duke University
N. Abu-Lail, Duke University
M. Alam, Duke University
S. Zauscher, Duke University
Correspondent: Click to Email
Having a simple, efficient, and sensitive technique for the diagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) is extremely important due to the increasing trend in HIV-1 cases, and the current lack of a rapid and simple method to detect the disease. We show that surface modified micro-cantilevers, decorated with monoclonal antibodies (mAb) A32, deflect upon specific binding of mAb A32 to HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein gp120 (HIV-1 Env gp120). This deflection of the micro-cantilever is a direct result of the surface stress induced by molecular recognition mediated protein binding. The specific binding between the two proteins was confirmed through force spectroscopy measurements between mAb 17b tethered to a surface and HIV-1 Env gp120 immobilized on the cantilever; HIV-1 gp120 will only bind mAb 17b if the former has bound to mAb A32. Our results show that micro-cantilever deflection can effectively be used for the sensitive detection of molecular recognition events, encouraging the further development of this technique as a rapid response biosensor for disease diagnosis. Work on determining the detection limits of the micro-cantilever deflection method and its extension to whole virus detection is in progress.