Assay development and storage for fluorescence-based lateral flow immunoassay

Point-of-care medical diagnostics can provide efficient, cost-effective medical care, and have the potential to fundamentally change our current approach to global health. There have been substantial efforts in developing lateral flow assays for serologic testing, but most of the existing approaches have limited portability, are expensive, and offer limited analytical sensitivity. In this paper, we demonstrated an assay for the detection of antibodies in plasma to Epstein-Barr Nuclear Antigen-1 (EBNA-1) protein and optimization of the assay including washing and blocking conditions. We also investigated the effect of the storage on the assay strips. Using our optimized conditions, we were able to detect anti-Human Papilloma Virus (HPV)-16 E7 antibodies after three weeks of storage. Our goal is to adapt this system to detect HPV biomarkers for cervical cancers in low and middle-income countries.