Cancer Metastasis Alert and Prevention Center, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Cancer Metastasis Chemoprevention and Chemotherapy, Pharmaceutical Photocatalysis of State Key Laboratory of Photocatalysis on Energy and Environment, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350002, China.
Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, United States.
ACS Nano. 2021 Dec 28;15(12):19211-19224. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.1c04260. Epub 2021 Dec 2.
Abnormal expression of miRNAs is often detected in various human cancers. DNAzyme machines combined with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) hold promise for detecting specific miRNAs in living cells but show short circulation time due to the fragility of catalytic core. Using miRNA-21 as the model target, by introducing a circular bulging DNA shield into the middle of the catalytic core, we report herein a self-protected DNAzyme (E) walker capable of fully stepping on the substrate (S)-modified AuNP for imaging intracellular miRNAs. The DNAzyme walker exhibits 5-fold enhanced serum resistance and more than 8-fold enhanced catalytic activity, contributing to the capability to image miRNAs much higher than commercial transfection reagent and well-known FISH technique. Diseased cells can accurately be distinguished from healthy cells. Due to its universality, DNAzyme walker can be extended for imaging other miRNAs only by changing target binding domain, indicating a promising tool for cancer diagnosis and prognosis.
miRNAs 的异常表达通常在各种人类癌症中被检测到。DNA zyme 机器与金纳米颗粒（AuNPs）结合，有望在活细胞中检测特定的 miRNAs，但由于催化核心的脆弱性，其循环时间很短。本文以 miRNA-21 为模型靶标，通过在催化核心中间引入一个圆形凸起的 DNA 盾，我们报道了一种自我保护的 DNAzyme（E）walker，能够完全在底物（S）修饰的 AuNP 上进行成像细胞内的 miRNAs。DNAzyme walker 表现出 5 倍的血清抗性增强和超过 8 倍的催化活性增强，这有助于比商业转染试剂和著名的 FISH 技术更有效地成像 miRNAs。能够准确地区分患病细胞和健康细胞。由于其通用性，只需改变靶结合域，DNAzyme walker 就可以扩展用于成像其他 miRNAs，这表明它是癌症诊断和预后的有前途的工具。
