Ultrabright nanoparticle-labeled lateral flow immunoassay for detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies in human serum

The level of anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies (NAb) is an indispensable reference for evaluating the acquired protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2. Here, we established an ultrabright nanoparticles-based lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) for one-step rapid semi-quantitative detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 NAb in vaccinee's serum. Once embedded in polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles, the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogen, AIE490, exhibited ultrabright fluorescence due to the rigidity of PS and severe inhibition of intramolecular motions. The ultrabright AIE490-PS nanoparticle was used as a fluorescent marker of LFIA. Upon optimized conditions including incubation time, concentrations of coated proteins and conjugated nanoparticles, amounts of antigens modified on the surface of nanoparticles, dilution rate of serum samples, and so on, the ultrabright nanoparticles-based LFIA could accurately identify 70 negative samples and 63 positive samples from human serum (p < 0.0001). The intra- and inter-assay precisions of the established method are above 13% and 16%, respectively. The established LFIA has tremendous practical value of generalization as a rapid semi-quantitative detection method of anti-SARS-CoV-2 NAb. Meanwhile, the AIE490-PS nanoparticle is also promising to detect many other analytes by altering the protein on the surface.