RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 P1 Rapid all-optical blood serum assay for heart disease biomarkers JF Heart JO Heart FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Cardiovascular Society SP A2 OP A2 DO 10.1136/heartjnl-2016-310696.5 VO 102 IS Suppl 8 A1 LE MacKenzie A1 EK Barimah A1 G Jose A1 S Saha YR 2016 UL http://heart.bmj.com/content/102/Suppl_8/A2.2.abstract AB Blood-serum assays for heart-disease biomarkers such as myoglobin (Mb) and heart-type fatty acid binding protein (HFABP) are highly useful for objective cardiac infarct diagnosis and assessment of infarct size. However, current blood-serum immunoassays are extremely time consuming, requiring several hours of highly skilled labour in a biochemical laboratory. We present a novel optical assay method for quantification of heart disease biomarkers in biological solutions (eg blood serum/urine). This method utilises the optical fluorescence properties of Europium III (Eu3+) rare-earth ions: when biomarkers are present in a solution, the fluorescence emission of Eu3+ ions is changed. This change in fluorescence can be easily measured in an automated manner, enabling the rapid quantification of biomarkers in solution. In future, this method may be multiplexed to a “lab on a chip” device to measure multiple biomarkers simultaneously from a single biological sample in ~1 minute or less. This could potentially decrease the diagnosis time for heart disease and improve patient outcomes.