Optical Fibre FPI End-Tip based Sensor for Protein Aggregation Detection

Abstract

The detection of protein aggregates and its concentration, plays a relevant role in several fronts, namely at the detection of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, and the assessment of cellular stress linked to cell death. Evaluation of protein aggregation is an essential step of quality control in all stages of biopharmaceutical synthesis and transport, in order to guarantee the activity and desired immunogenicity of their products. The detection of protein aggregates often requires the use of expensive and complex techniques. Here we propose a fast and easy implementation solution, based on an optical fibre Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI) end tip resonator. The solution proposed revealed to be effective on the detection of protein aggregates, providing similar results as the ones obtained using a commercial spectrometer for fluorescence detection.