Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 21, 2018; 24(47): 5379-5390
Published online Dec 21, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i47.5379
Novel screening test for celiac disease using peptide functionalised gold nanoparticles
Anantdeep Kaur, Olga Shimoni, Michael Wallach
Anantdeep Kaur, Olga Shimoni, Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney 2007, Australia
Michael Wallach, School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney 2007, Australia
Author contributions: Shimoni O and Wallach M designed research; Kaur A performed research, analysed data; Kaur A wrote the paper with critical revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript from Shimoni O and Wallach M; all authors approved the final version of the article to be published.
Supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, No. IH150100028; and Olga Shimoni acknowledges the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council for financial support, No. APP1101258.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the University of Technology Sydney Research Ethics committee (UTS HREC ETH16 - 0841). The clinical samples were collected with informed consent and approval of Melbourne Health and WEHI Human Research Ethic Committees (2003.009 and 03/04) respectively.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author to: Olga Shimoni, BSc, MSc, PhD, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, 15 Broadway, Ultimo, New South Wales, Sydney 2007, Australia. Olga.Shimoni@uts.edu.au
Telephone: +61-2-95142842
Received: July 13, 2018
Peer-review started: July 13, 2018
First decision: August 27, 2018
Revised: September 1, 2018
Accepted: October 5, 2018
Article in press: October 5, 2018
Published online: December 21, 2018
Processing time: 161 Days and 5.6 Hours
Abstract
AIM

To develop a screening test for celiac disease based on the coating of gold nanoparticles with a peptide sequence derived from gliadin, the protein that triggers celiac disease.

METHODS

20 nm gold nanoparticles were first coated with NeutrAvidin. A long chain Polyethylene glycol (PEG) linker containing Maleimide at the Ω-end and Biotin group at the α-end was used to ensure peptide coating to the gold nanoparticles. The maleimide group with the thiol (-SH) side chain reacted with the cysteine amino acid in the peptide sequence and the biotinylated and PEGylated peptide was added to the NeutrAvidin coated gold nanoparticles. The peptide coated gold nanoparticles were then converted into a serological assay. We used the peptide functionalised gold nanoparticle-based assay on thirty patient serum samples in a blinded assessment and compared our results with the previously run serological and pathological tests on these patients.

RESULTS

A stable colloidal suspension of peptide coated gold nanoparticles was obtained without any aggregation. An absorbance peak shift as well as color change was caused by the aggregation of gold nanoparticles following the addition of anti-gliadin antibody to peptide coated nanoparticles at levels associated with celiac disease. The developed assay has been shown to detect anti-gliadin antibody not only in quantitatively spiked samples but also in a small-scale study on real non-hemolytic celiac disease patient’s samples.

CONCLUSION

The study demonstrates the potential of gold nanoparticle-peptide based approach to be adapted for developing a screening assay for celiac disease diagnosis. The assay could be a part of an exclusion based diagnostic strategy and prove particularly useful for testing high celiac disease risk populations.

Keywords: Celiac disease; Serological point-of-care; Gold nanoparticles; Diagnostic test; Autoantibodies

Core tip: In the present study, we demonstrated that a peptide sequence derived from gliadin, a hydrophobic whole protein that induces celiac disease, in conjunction with gold nanoparticles can be used to detect a biomarker for celiac disease from serum. We confirmed our gold nanoparticle based serological assay can detect anti-gliadin antibody not only in quantitatively spiked samples but also in a small-scale study on real non-hemolytic celiac disease patient’s samples.