Rapid and sensitive diagnosing hematological infections based on the separation and detection of pathogenic bacteria in the patient's blood is a significant challenge. To address this, we herein present a new barcodes technology that can simultaneously capture and detect multiple types of pathogenic bacteria from a complex sample. The barcodes are poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogel inverse opal particles with characteristic reflection peak codes that remain stable during bacteria capture on their surfaces. As the spherical surface of the particles has ordered porous nanostructure, the barcodes can provide not only more surface area for probe immobilization and reaction, but also a nanopatterned platform for highly efficient bioreactions. In addition, the PEG hydrogel scaffold could decrease the non-specificity adsorption by its anti-adhesive effect, and the decorated aptamer probes in the scaffolds could increase the sensitivity, reliability, and specificity of the bacteria capture and detection. Moreover, the tagged magnetic nanoparticles in the PEG scaffold could impart the barcodes with controllable movement under magnetic fields, which can be used to significantly increase the reaction speed and simplify the processing of the bioassays. Based on the describe barcodes, it was demonstrated that the bacteria could be captured and identified even at low bacterial concentrations (100 CFU mL) within 2.5h, which is effectively shortened in comparison with the "gold standard" in clinic. These features make the barcodes ideal for capturing and detecting multiple bacteria from clinical samples for hematological infection diagnostics.
The development of a highly sensitive platform for multiplex circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) detection is important for clinical diagnosis. Here, a new type of porous hydrogel encapsulated photonic crystal (PhC) barcodes is presented with integrated rolling circle amplification (RCA) strategy for multiplex miRNA quantification. As the surrounding porous hydrogel shells of the PhC barcodes are interconnected inverse opal structure with hydrophilic scaffolds, they can provide homogeneous water surrounding for the miRNA targets reaction and RCA. The encapsulated PhC cores of the barcodes can offer stable diffraction peaks for encoding different miRNAs and their RCAs during the detection. By integrating the advantages of PhC barcodes and RCA, it is demonstrated that the technology shows acceptable accuracy and detection reproducibility for the rapid quantification of lowabundance miRNAs, with the limits of detection of 20 fM. Thus, the proposed porous hydrogel encapsulated PhC barcodes provide a new platform for the multiplex quantification of low-abundance targets for practical applications.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a new class of noncoding RNAs, which can hybridize to target messenger RNAs and regulate their expression posttranscriptionally, express differentially in distinct stages of lymphopoiesis and influence the direction of lymphoid precursor maturation. Hence, there is aberrant expression of miRNAs involved in malignant lymphopoiesis, and these aberrations can be used as signatures of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with different subtypes. In addition, changes in the expression of several miRNAs may have functional relevance with leukemogenesis or drug resistance. As a result, the reversal of the expression of these miRNAs may alleviate the disease to some extent and improve clinical outcomes. However, among the studies of miRNAs, there are still some problems that need to be solved to understand the function of miRNAs in ALL more thoroughly.
Barcodes-based suspension array have for demonstrated values in multiplex assay of tumor markers. Photonic barcodes which are encoded by their characteristic reflection peaks are the important supports for suspension array due to their stable code, low fluorescent background and high surface-volume ratio. Attempts to develop this technology tend to improve the function of the photonic barcodes. Here, we present a new type of hybrid hydrogel photonic barcodes for efficient multiplex assays. This photonic barcodes are hybrid inverse opal hydrogel composed of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEG-DA) and agarose. The polymerized PEG-DA hydrogel could guarantee the stabilities of the inverse opal structure and its resultant code, while the agarose could offer active chemical groups for the probe immobilization and homogeneous water surrounding for the bioassay. In addition, the interconnected pores inverse opal structure could provide channels for biomolecules diffusing and reaction into the voids of barcodes. These features imparted the hybrid hydrogel photonic barcodes with limits of detection (LOD) of 0.78ng/mL for carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and 0.21ng/mL for α-fetoprotein (AFP), respectively. It was also demonstrated that the proposed barcodes showed acceptable accuracy and detection reproducibility, and the results were in acceptable agreement with those from common clinic method for the detections of practical clinical samples. Thus, our technique provides a new platform for simultaneous multiplex immunoassay.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.