Multifunctional Oval-Shaped Gold-Nanoparticle-Based Selective Detection of Breast Cancer Cells Using Simple Colorimetric and Highly Sensitive Two-Photon Scattering Assay

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today. The key to the effective and ultimately successful treatment of diseases such as cancer is an early and accurate diagnosis. Driven by the need, in this article, we report for the first time a simple colorimetric and highly sensitive two-photon scattering assay for highly selective and sensitive detection of breast cancer SK-BR-3 cell lines in 100-cells/ml level using multifunctional (monoclonal anti-HER2/c-erb-2 antibody and S6 RNA aptamers conjugated) oval shape gold nanoparticle based nanoconjugate. When multifunctional oval shape gold nanoparticles were mixed with breast cancer SK-BR-3 cell line, a distinct color change occurs and two-photon scattering intensity increases by about 13 times. Experimental data with HaCaT non-cancerous cell line, as well as with MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line clearly demonstrated that our assay was highly sensitive to SK-BR-3 and it was able to distinguish from other breast cancer cell line which expresses low levels of HER-2. The mechanism of selectivity and assay's response change, have been discussed. Our experimental results reported here open up a new possibility of rapid, easy and reliable diagnosis of cancer cell lines by monitoring the colorimetric change and measuring TPS intensity from multifunctional gold nanosystems.

Tumor-specific hyperthermia with aptamer-tagged superparamagnetic nanoparticles

“…Magnetic hyperthermia decreases the required dose of chemotherapeutics, reducing the side effects of chemotherapy; 18 in this way, this approach is particularly efficient in cancers that are resistant to chemotherapeutics. 19 Aptamers are becoming valuable molecular tools in diagnostics and therapeutics, and they are used as bioconjugates in combination with drugs and nanomaterials in biosensors, 20 bioseparation, targeted drug delivery, 21 and cancer treatment. 22,23 In this paper, we used dextran-coated ferric oxide NPs tagged with an aptamer directed against a cell surface receptor to show the ability of such a system to selectively recognize receptor-presenting cells.…”

Colorimetric sensing of copper(II) based on catalytic etching of gold nanoparticles

“…Recent researches show that nanoparticlesbased coorimetric assays can overcome the shortcoming of traditional colorimetric methods, since nanoparticles have much higher molar extinction coefficients. Such methods have been succesively developed for the selective and sensitive sensing of proteins [10 ,11], cells [12,13], DNA [14,15], metal ions [16,17] and anions [18,19]. Corresponding strategies could be divided into three types.…”

Clinical applications of nucleic acid aptamers in cancer

“…This method demonstrates the potential of aptamer-based analysis for rapid, simple, direct and sensitive detection of cancer cells in clinical diagnosis. In addition, using the two-photon scattering (TPS) technique, Lu et al (53) captured the signal from Apt-AuNP-based cell detection, resulting in the highly selective and sensitive detection of the SK-BR-3 breast cancer cell line at a level of 100 cells̸ml, using multifunctional (monoclonal anti-HER2̸c-erb-2 antibody and S6 RNA aptamer) AuNP conjugates. Oval-shaped AuNPs were introduced instead of spherical AuNPs.…”

“…Oval-shaped AuNPs were introduced instead of spherical AuNPs. As the particle aspect ratio increased, the TPS intensity change became higher, resulting in improved sensitivity (53). The research on the applications of aptamer-conjugated fluorophores has advanced rapidly over the last few years (54), including the use of quantum-dot (QD)-conjugated aptamers to perform multiplex detection of cancer cells (44).…”