Comparison of the Carbon Nano Tube Field Effect Transistor Based Immunosensor and ELISA for Detecting BRCA1 from Mouse Serum

We investigated the applicability of using CNT-FET (carbon nanotube field effect transistor) based biosensor as a diagnostic instrument in transgenic mice that are a preclinical model of human BRCA1-related breast cancer. The important factors for the development of effective biosensors were high sensitivity and simplification of the pretreatment process. We were able to lower the detection limit to a protein concentration of 1.0 ng/mL, without cutting antibody or labeling the target proteins. Both the IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) immunoassay and the CNT-FET gave comparable results; however, the CNT-FETs were much faster than the immunoassay. Additionally, the low sample volume required by CNT-FETs can be especially advantageous for studies constricted by limited amount of human clinical samples and for mouse studies, since animals often need to be sacrificed to obtain enough serum for biomarker evaluation.