Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 710 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Biosensors (Basel). 2024 Jul 25;14(8):360. doi: 10.3390/bios14080360.
Opportunistic bacterial pathogens can evade the immune response by residing and reproducing within host immune cells, including macrophages. These intracellular infections provide reservoirs for pathogens that enhance the progression of infections and inhibit therapeutic strategies. Current sensing strategies for intracellular infections generally use immunosensing of specific biomarkers on the cell surface or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of the corresponding nucleic acids, making detection difficult, time-consuming, and challenging to generalize. Intracellular infections can induce changes in macrophage glycosylation, providing a potential strategy for signature-based detection of intracellular infections. We report here the detection of bacterial infection in macrophages using a boronic acid (BA)-based pH-responsive polymer sensor array engineered to distinguish mammalian cell phenotypes by their cell surface glycosylation signatures. The sensor was able to discriminate between different infecting bacteria in minutes, providing a promising tool for diagnostic and screening applications.
机会性病原体可以通过在宿主免疫细胞（包括巨噬细胞）内寄居和繁殖来逃避免疫反应。这些细胞内感染为病原体提供了储库，从而促进了感染的进展并抑制了治疗策略。目前针对细胞内感染的传感策略通常使用细胞表面上特定生物标志物的免疫传感或相应核酸的聚合酶链反应（PCR），这使得检测变得困难、耗时且难以推广。细胞内感染可以诱导巨噬细胞糖基化的变化，为基于特征的细胞内感染检测提供了一种潜在策略。我们在这里报告了一种基于硼酸（BA）的 pH 响应聚合物传感器阵列的检测方法，该传感器阵列是通过其细胞表面糖基化特征来区分哺乳动物细胞表型的。该传感器能够在数分钟内区分不同的感染细菌，为诊断和筛选应用提供了一种有前途的工具。
