Highly sensitive and simultaneous detection of ctDNAs related to non-small cell lung cancer in serum using a catalytic hairpin assembly strategy in a SERS microfluidic chip
Xiaowei Cao, Yu Mao, Yuexing Gu, Shengjie Ge, Wenbo Lu, Yingyan Gu, Zhiyue Li
Abstract
duplexes. As the reaction proceeds, more and more SERS probes are captured on the substrate. The gathered reaction products continuously form a lot of hot spots, which greatly enhance the SERS signal. This reaction was completed within 5 minutes. Through this method, the detection limits of TP53 and PIK3CA-Q546K in human serum were as low as 2.26 aM and 2.34 aM, respectively. The microfluidic chip also exhibited high specificity, reproducibility and stability. The clinical feasibility of the SERS microfluidic chip was verified by analyzing the serum samples of healthy subjects and NSCLC patients. The reliability of the experimental results was verified by the qRT-PCR test. The constructed SERS-based analytical micro-platform has great potential in dynamic monitoring of cancer staging and could be used as a clinical tool for early cancer screening.