Gold island‐enhanced multiplex quantum dots fluorescent system for biomedical analysis of circulating tumor nucleic acids

Abstract

Abstract Circulating tumor nucleic acids (CTNAs) have been employed as the potential markers for tumor diagnosis and management, which are highly correlated with the tumorigenesis, progression, and metastasis processes. Therefore, it is important to develop a highly‐sensitive and reliable method for the detection of CTNAs, especially the multiplex point mutation detection of blood‐derived CTNAs. Herein, a versatile gold island‐enhanced multiplex quantum dots (GIEM‐QDs) fluorescent platform was constructed for the highly‐sensitive detection of CTNAs in serum. The GIEM fluorescent strategy was designed as the highly‐efficient signal giving‐out mode which could amplify the fluorescence intensity of QDs, thus realizing a homogeneous platform for the enrichment, multiplex detection, and point mutations monitoring of CTNAs with the principle of base‐stacking. A high sensitivity of 10 amol and desirable specificity was achieved, and the performance index for analysis of clinical tumor patients’ samples indicated that the GIEM‐QDs fluorescent strategy could realize multiplex point mutation detection of CTNAs in complex blood samples. Hence, this platform could achieve a high detection rate in clinical samples that suitably met the clinical requirements for multiplex detection and point mutations monitoring of CTNAs, and thus has the potential to serve as the tumor liquid biopsy strategy based on CTNAs.

Keywords

• circulating tumor nucleic acids
• gold island
• multiplex detection
• quantum dots