Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering , The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong , China.
Nano Lett. 2018 Jul 11;18(7):4226-4232. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b01184. Epub 2018 Jun 13.
Exosomes shed by tumor cells have been recognized as promising biomarkers for cancer diagnostics due to their unique composition and functions. Quantification of low concentrations of specific exosomes present in very small volumes of clinical samples may be used for noninvasive cancer diagnosis and prognosis. We developed an immunosorbent assay for digital qualification of target exosomes using droplet microfluidics. The exosomes were immobilized on magnetic microbeads through sandwich ELISA complexes tagged with an enzymatic reporter that produces a fluorescent signal. The constructed beads were further isolated and encapsulated into a sufficient number of droplets to ensure only a single bead was encapsulated in a droplet. Our droplet-based single-exosome-counting enzyme-linked immunoassay (droplet digital ExoELISA) approach enables absolute counting of cancer-specific exosomes to achieve unprecedented accuracy. We were able to achieve a limit of detection (LOD) down to 10 enzyme-labeled exosome complexes per microliter (∼10 M). We demonstrated the application of the droplet digital ExoELISA platform in quantitative detection of exosomes in plasma samples directly from breast cancer patients. We believe our approach may have the potential for early diagnosis of cancer and accelerate the discovery of cancer exosomal biomarkers for clinical diagnosis.
肿瘤细胞分泌的外泌体由于其独特的组成和功能,已被认为是有前途的癌症诊断生物标志物。在非常小体积的临床样本中定量检测低浓度的特定外泌体,可能用于非侵入性癌症诊断和预后。我们使用液滴微流控技术开发了一种免疫吸附剂测定法,用于通过数字方式对靶向外泌体进行定量。通过三明治 ELISA 复合物将外泌体固定在带有酶报告分子的磁性微珠上,该报告分子产生荧光信号。构建的珠子进一步被分离并封装到足够数量的液滴中,以确保每个液滴中仅封装一个珠子。我们的基于液滴的单个外泌体计数酶联免疫吸附测定(液滴数字 ExoELISA)方法能够实现对癌症特异性外泌体的绝对计数,从而达到前所未有的准确性。我们能够将检测限(LOD)降低到每微升 10 个酶标记的外泌体复合物(约 10M)。我们证明了液滴数字 ExoELISA 平台在直接从乳腺癌患者的血浆样本中定量检测外泌体方面的应用。我们相信,我们的方法有可能用于癌症的早期诊断,并加速癌症外泌体生物标志物的发现,以用于临床诊断。
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