The detection of the captured circulating tumor cells on the core-shell nanofibrous membrane using hyaluronic acid-functionalized graphene quantum dots.

In recent years, cancerous cases have increased remarkably worldwide, and metastasis is the leading cause of death. Therefore, research on the early detection of cancer and metastasis has expanded to aid successful cancer treatment. Here in this paper, at the first step, an electrospun nanofibrous membrane (NFM) with a core-shell structure was fabricated from PCL and HA to achieve cancer cell capturing (about 75% of cells). On the other hand, hyaluronic acid (HA)-functionalized graphene quantum dots (GQDs) were used to detect captured cancer cells on NFM through the changes in photoluminescence intensity. Therefore, CD44 receptor-HA interaction is the main principle used for both entrapment and detection of cancer cells. Results demonstrated the GQD-HA fluorescent intensity of solution decreased through the increase of the captured cancer cell numbers on NFM, which is related to the more adsorption of GQD nanocomposites to the CD44 receptors. In contrast, this intensity for noncancerous cells was steady with any cell concentrations. This difference shows the system's remarkable selectivity and specificity, which can be crucial in fluorescent imaging for accurate cancer diagnosis.