title: ZnO nanorods-enhanced fluorescence for sensitive microarray detection of cancers in serum without additional reporter-amplification.
abstract: Current high-throughput antibody microarrays greatly rely on enzymatic reactions- or nanostructured tags-based reporter-amplifications for required sensitivity, but they need tedious operation, additional expensive reagents and microwells or microchannels to eliminate crossover interferences, thus resulting in low array density and high expense. A unique ZnO nanorods-grown substrate is developed here to not only immobilize a large amount of probe molecules, but also directly amplify the microarray fluorescent signals in detection of two important cancer biomarkers, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and α-fetoprotein (AFP), achieving a detection limit of 1 pg mL(-1) in human serum, which is comparative to or lower than that of ELISA. This advanced ZnO nanorods-based substrate can be mass-manufactured, which offers great potential to fabricate economical and sensitive protein arrays for broad applications in clinic diagnosis, therapeutic monitoring and drug discovery.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Weihua
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Yingshuai
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hongbin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Xiaoqun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Chang Ming
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D002272:Carcinoembryonic Antigen / Q000097:blood*; D005453:Fluorescence; D006801:Humans; D043942:Nanotubes / Q000737:chemistry*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D040081:Protein Array Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D015034:Zinc Oxide / Q000737:chemistry*; D000509:alpha-Fetoproteins / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D002272:Carcinoembryonic Antigen; D000509:alpha-Fetoproteins; D015034:Zinc Oxide