Wet-strength resins and surface properties affect paper-based antibody assays

With a long-term view to developing bioactive paper which can detect pathogens, we have evaluated the influence of wet-strength resins on antibody based detection. Surprisingly we found that normal loadings of reactive cationic wet-strength resins did not interfere with the antibody assays. Indeed, low PAE or PVAm contents actually helped. More than 40 commercial filter media and a few model surfaces were evaluated as potential supports for antibody detection. The performance varied from about 1% to 300% compared to A55 our standard ashless, acid hardened filter paper. Generally the cellulosic substrates performed better than glass and plastic fibers with our pentameric antibody which was fused to five cellulose binding modules.