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 ash-less, 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.