Enhanced Performance Electrochemical Biosensor for Detection of Prostate Cancer Biomarker PCA3 Using Specific Aptamer

Abstract

In the quest for the development of accurate, reliable, and cost-effective biosensing technology for early diagnostics of prostate cancer, we describe here an electrochemical biosensor combining a simple transducing method of differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) with an RNA-based aptamer labelled with a methylene blue redox group acting as a highly specific bioreceptor to the prostate cancer biomarker PCA3. A series of DPV measurements on screen-printed gold electrodes is functionalised with a redox-labelled aptamer in solutions (either buffer or synthetic urine) containing PCA3 in a wide range of concentrations from 0.1 picomolar (pM) to 10 nanomolar (nM). In these measurements, the current peak values correlate with the concentration of PCA3 and yield a low detection limit (LDL) of 0.1 pM. Furthermore, the binding kinetics study revealed the high affinity of the aptamer to the target PCA3 with the affinity constants KD of about 3.0 × 10−8 molar. In addition, the AFM study showed the increase in the molecular layer roughness caused by the binding of PCA3, which is a large RNA molecular fragment.

Keywords

• prostate cancer
• PCA3 biomarker
• aptamer
• electrochemical sensors
• digital pulse voltammetry
• binding kinetics