Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy on Interdigitated Gold Microelectrodes for Glycosylated Human Serum Albumin Characterization

Glycosylated albumin is considered as a potentially accurate indicator of shorter-term average glucose concentration compared with the current standard HbA1c and as such, it is attracting the interest of the scientific community as a possible diagnosis marker for diabetic patients. The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of the glycation effect of albumin on its electrochemical properties. That is done through the use of Interdigitated gold microelectrodes (IDGE) as support in a label free impedimetric immunosensor for the detection of human serum albumin detection in glycated (GA) and non-glycated (HSA) form. Anti-human serum albumin, a monoclonal antibody, was physisorbed on the surface of IDGE and used as a HSA/GA bioreceptor. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, and surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) were used for the characterization of the grafted layers onto the gold surface. A detection range from 1 to 401 ng/mL of non glycated HSA antigen in phosphate buffered saline buffer was obtained with the impedance spectroscopy technique. The experiment led to the observation of a significant impedance difference between the glycated and non-glycated antigen of HSA. SPRi measurements confirmed these findings and allowed us to suggest an increase of the dielectric permittivity for human serum albumin upon glycation.