Blood-based immunoassay of tau proteins for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease using surface plasmon resonance fiber sensors

We present the immunoassay of tau proteins (total tau and phosphorylated tau) in human sera using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) fiber sensors. This assay aimed at harvesting the advantages of using both SPR fiber sensors and a blood-based assay to demonstrate label-free point-of-care-testing (POCT) patient-friendly assay in a compact format for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). For conducting the assay, we used human sera of 40 subjects divided into halves, which were grouped into AD patients and control groups according to a number of neuropsychological tests. We found that on an average, the concentrations of both total tau and phosphorylated tau proteins (all known to be higher in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the brain) turned out to be higher in human sera of AD patients than in controls. The limits of detection of total tau and phosphorylated tau proteins were 2.4 pg mL(−1) and 1.6 pg mL(−1), respectively. In particular, it was found that the AD group exhibited average concentration of total tau proteins 6-fold higher than the control group, while concentration of phosphorylated tau proteins was 3-fold higher than that of the control. We can attribute this inhomogeneity between both types of tau proteins (in terms of increase of control-to-AD in average concentration) to un-phosphorylated tau proteins being more likely to be produced in blood than phosphorylated tau proteins, which possibly is one of the potential key elements playing an important role in AD progress.