Department of Pathophysiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China.
Analyst. 2020 Apr 7;145(7):2676-2681. doi: 10.1039/c9an02476j. Epub 2020 Feb 17.
Highly sensitive and specific detection of rare tumor cells is urgently needed for early tumor diagnosis. Herein, a split aptamer-based dual hybridization chain reaction (dual-HCR) strategy with flow cytometry analysis was developed to meet this purpose. With the split aptamer pair as the recognition unit and HCR as the signal amplification technique, this strategy achieved an improved detection limit as low as 20 cells in 200 μL binding buffer. Meanwhile, this method was highly specific with distinct recognition of the target cells from the control cell and mixed cell samples. Furthermore, we succeeded in the specific detection of the target cells in 50% human serum, demonstrating that this method has great potential in clinical applications. In theory, this strategy can be used to detect different target cells by using different split aptamers. Therefore, this general, sensitive and specific tumor cell detection method may be helpful for early clinical diagnosis and cancer research.
高灵敏度和特异性检测稀有肿瘤细胞对于早期肿瘤诊断至关重要。在此，我们开发了一种基于分裂适体的双杂交链式反应（dual-HCR）策略，并结合流式细胞术分析，以满足这一目的。该策略采用分裂适体对作为识别单元，HCR 作为信号放大技术，实现了低至 20 个细胞的改进检测限，在 200μL 结合缓冲液中。同时，该方法具有高度特异性，能够从对照细胞和混合细胞样本中明显区分目标细胞。此外，我们成功地在 50%人血清中特异性检测到靶细胞，表明该方法在临床应用中具有巨大潜力。从理论上讲，通过使用不同的分裂适体，该策略可用于检测不同的靶细胞。因此，这种通用、敏感和特异的肿瘤细胞检测方法可能有助于早期临床诊断和癌症研究。
