High-Level Lanthanide-Doped Upconversion Nanoparticles-Based Aptasensor to Increase Carcinoembryonic Antigen...

Area of Science:

• Nanotechnology for biosensing
• Biomedical engineering
• Cancer diagnostics

Background:

• Accurate and rapid cancer detection is critical for effective tumor treatment.
• Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a significant biomarker for various cancers.
• Existing detection methods require improvement in sensitivity and speed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a highly sensitive sensor for detecting carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA).
• To leverage fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) for enhanced cancer biomarker detection.
• To explore the potential of heavily doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) in biosensing applications.

Main Methods:

• Constructed a FRET-based sensor using heavily rare-earth-doped UCNPs as donors and polydopamine nanoparticles (PDA NPs) as acceptors.
• Employed a competitive binding assay where CEA competes with PDA NPs for binding.
• Utilized luminescence quenching and recovery of UCNPs to quantify CEA levels.

Main Results:

• The high-level-doped UCNPs exhibited over 10 times higher luminescence intensity compared to low-level-doped UCNPs.
• Achieved a low detection limit of 0.013 ng/mL for CEA in diluted fetal bovine serum within the 0-1.5 ng/mL range.
• Demonstrated a broad detection range with a limit of 1.38 ng/mL in the 1.5-250 ng/mL range.

Conclusions:

• The developed UCNP-PDA NP sensor offers superior sensitivity and speed for CEA detection.
• The high-level-doping strategy significantly enhances UCNP performance for biosensing.
• This sensor shows great potential for rapid and early cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring.