Tumor-derived exosomes play a vital role in the process of cancer development. Quantitative analysis of exosomes and exosome-shuttled proteins would be of immense value in understanding cancer progression and generating reliable predictive biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Recent studies have indicated the critical role of exosomal programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in immune checkpoint therapy and its application as a patient stratification biomarker in cancer immunotherapy. Here, we present a nanoplasmonic exosome immunoassay utilizing gold−silver (Au@Ag) core−shell nanobipyramids and gold nanorods, which form sandwich immune complexes with target exosomes. The immunoassay generates a distinct plasmonic signal pattern unique to exosomes with specific exosomal PD-L1 expression, allowing rapid, highly sensitive exosome detection and accurate identification of PD-L1 exosome subtypes in a single assay. The developed nanoplasmonic sandwich immunoassay provides a novel and viable approach for tumor cell-derived exosome detection and analysis with quantitative molecular details of key exosomal proteins, manifesting its great potential as a transformative diagnostic tool for early cancer detection, prognosis, and post-treatment monitoring.

Rapid and accurate immune monitoring plays a decisive role in effectively treating immune-related diseases especially at point-of-care, where an immediate decision on treatment is needed upon precise determination of the patient immune status. Derived from the emerging clinical demands, there is an urgent need for a cytokine immunoassay that offers unprecedented sensor performance with high sensitivity, throughput and multiplexing capability, as well as short turnaround time at low system complexity, manufacturability and scalability. In this paper, we developed a label-free, high throughput cytokine immunoassay based on a magnet patterned Fe3O4/Au core-shell nanoparticle (FACSNP) sensing array. By exploiting the unique superparamagnetic and plasmonic properties of the core-shell nanomaterials, we established a facile microarray patterning technique that allows the fabrication of uniform, self-assembled microarray in a large surface area with remarkable tunability and scalability. The sensing performance of the FACSNP microarray was validated by real-time detection of four cytokines in complex biological samples, showing high sensitivity (~ 20 pg/mL), selectivity and throughput with excellent statistical accuracy. The developed immunoassay was successfully applied for rapid determination of functional immunophenotype of leukemia tumor associated macrophages, manifesting its potential clinical applications for real-time immune monitoring, early cancer detection, and therapeutic drug stratification towards personalized medicine.

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An experimental and numerical investigation of coarse aggregate settlement in fresh concrete under vibration

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