Characterizations of Anti-Alpha-Fetoprotein-Conjugated Magnetic Nanoparticles Associated with Alpha-Fetoprotein for Biomedical Applications

In this work, we report characterizations of biofunctionalized magnetic nanoparticles (BMNPs) associated with alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) for biomedical applications. The example BMNP in this study is anti-alpha-fetoprotein (anti-AFP) conjugated onto dextran-coated Fe₃O₄ labeled as Fe₃O₄-anti-AFP, and the target is AFP. We characterize magnetic properties, such as increments of magnetization ΔMH and effective relaxation time Δτeff in the reaction process. It is found that both ΔMH and Δτeff are enhanced when the concentration of AFP, ФAFP, increases. The enhancements are due to magnetic interactions among BMNPs in magnetic clusters, which contribute extra MH after the association with MH and in turn enhance τeff. The screening of patients carrying hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is verified via ΔMH/MH. The proposed method can be applied to detect a wide variety of analytes. The scaling characteristics of ΔMH/MH show the potential to develop a vibrating sample magnetometer system with low field strength for clinic applications.