title: Gold nanoparticle-based activatable probe for sensing ultralow levels of prostate-specific antigen.
abstract: It is still in high demand to develop extremely sensitive and accurate clinical tools for biomarkers of interest for early diagnosis and monitoring of diseases. In this report, we present a highly sensitive and compatible gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based fluorescence-activatable probe for sensing ultralow levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in patient serum samples. The limit of detection of the newly developed probe for PSA was pushed down to 0.032 pg/mL, which is more than 2 orders of magnitude lower than that of the conventional fluorescence probe. The ultrahigh sensitivity of this probe was attributed to the high loading efficiency of the dyes on AuNP surfaces and high fluorescence quenching-unquenching abilities of the dye-AuNP pairs. The efficiency and robustness of this probe were investigated in patient serum samples, demonstrating the great potential of this probe in real-world applications.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Dingbin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xinglu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Zhantong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Xiaolian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Fu
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.forename: Angela R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Hight Walker
authors.forename: Xiaoyuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D001774:Blood Chemical Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D010316:Particle Size; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen / Q000097:blood*; D012235:Rhodamines / Q000737:chemistry; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D012235:Rhodamines; D006046:Gold; C027755:rhodamine isothiocyanate; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen