Design and construction of novel molecular conjugates for signal amplification (II): use of multivalent polystyrene microparticles and lysine peptide chains to generate immunoglobulin-horseradish peroxidase conjugates

Spherical polystyrene microparticles expressing a large number of highly reactive functional groups were chemically engineered to generate antibody–enzyme conjugates as novel signal amplification systems. Chemically modified goat anti-human IgG and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) were combined in a 1:5 ratio and attached to 0.44 μm streptavidin microparticles or N-succinimidyl-S-acetylthioacetate (SATA)-activated 0.29 μm amino microparticles with highly reactive free sulfhydryl groups on their surface. The numbers of HRP molecules/microparticle were further increased by coupling HRP to primary amines on N-terminal biotinylated or bromoacetylated polypeptides containing 20 lysine residues prior to conjugation with streptavidin or sulfhydryl groups-containing microparticles. The antibody–poly-HRP immunoconjugates contained an estimated number of 10⁵ HRP/streptavidin microparticle and 10⁶ HRP/amino microparticle, respectively. These microparticle immunoconjugates efficiently bound to plasma anti-HIV-1 antibodies that had been captured by HIV antigens on 5 μm carboxyl magnetic microparticles and, upon reaction with orthophenyldiamine substrate, produced a detection signal with 5–8 times more sensitivity as compared to conventional HRP-conjugated goat anti-human IgG. The signal amplification technique by microparticle immunoconjugates may provide potentially novel tools for the development of highly sensitive diagnostic systems.