Tetra-substituted Amino Aluminum Phthalocyanine as a New Red-region Fluorescent Substrate for Horseradish Peroxidase Based Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay

The use of tetra-substituted ammo aluminum phthalocyanine (TAAIPc) as a new red-region fluorescent substrate for horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was investigated. TAAIPc displayed an excitation maximum at 610 nm and emission maximum at 678 nm in a strong acidic medium. In the presence of HRP, trace amounts of H₂O₂ could rapidly and significantly react with TAAIPc, thus quenching the fluorescence of TAAIPc. The Michaelis-Menten parameters K_m and V_max were measured to be 2.82 × 10⁻⁶ mol/L⁻¹ and 6.0 × 10⁻⁹ mol·L⁻¹, respectively. In this paper, TAAIPc was used in an HRP-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) of α-fetoprotein (AFP) in human serum with satisfactory results. AFP could be determined in the concentration range of 0.5–200 ng/mL with a detection limit of 0.2 ng/mL, which was close to that of radioimmunoassay. The advantage of proposed method was strongly minimizing the interference resulting from background fluorescence or scattering light and had a high analytical sensitivity.