A highly sensitive LED-induced chemiluminescence platform for aptasensing of platelet-derived growth factor

In this work, we demonstrated a simple and highly sensitive LED-induced chemiluminescence (LED-CL) platform for aptasensing of proteins. It was based on the fact that fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) strongly catalyzed the reaction between luminol and dissolved oxygen under LED irradiation. Using FITC as a new catalytic tag, a highly sensitive sandwich type LED-CL aptasensor was fabricated for quantification of the model protein (platelet-derived growth factor-BB, PDGF-BB). Under optimized conditions, the assay for PDGF-BB was linear from 0.1 nM to 100 nM, and the detection limit was as low as 50 pM, which is better than most of other aptamer-based assays without an amplification procedure. Thrombin, bovine serum albumin, hemoglobin, cytochrome C and adenosine triphosphate showed no obvious interferences for the determination of PDGF-BB. The advantages of high sensitivity and selectivity provided by this LED-CL aptasensor will facilitate its wide application in protein assays.