Poly(m-phenylenediamine)-based fluorescent nanoprobe for ultrasensitive detection of matrix metalloproteinase 2

A novel fluorescence nanoprobe for the detection of matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2) has been developed by engineering the fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled peptide onto the surface of poly(m-phenylenediamine) (PMPD) nanoparticles through covalent linkage. The nanoprobe itself displays a low background signal due to the effective fluorescence quenching by electron-rich PMPD, but its reaction with MMP2 causes 11-fold fluorescence enhancement. Compared with similar fluorescence nanosystems for MMP2 assembled through physical adsorption, the as-prepared nanoprobe is significantly more stable and displays a strikingly higher signal-to-background ratio, which leads to a high sensitivity for MMP2 assay, with a detection limit of 32 pM. Most notably, the nanoprobe has been successfully applied to determine MMP2 in human serum samples, demonstrating that the MMP2 level in serum from colorectal cancer (CRC) patients is 2 times higher than that from healthy people. Moreover, the nanoprobe has also been used to monitor MMP2 secreted by CRC cells that were grown under normoxic and hypoxic conditions, respectively, and the results show that the cells under hypoxic conditions produce higher level of MMP2 than those under normoxic conditions. Our method is simple and can offer a highly sensitive detection of MMP2 in relevant clinical samples.