Development of Smart Gold Nanoparticle-Based Colorimetric Assay for the Highly Sensitive Detection of Lung Cancer Markers

The simple detection of tumor markers remains a significant challenge in current analytical chemistry. The gold nanoparticle(AuNP)-based colorimetric assays are popularly used in biological and chemical sensors owing to their fascinating properties such as a visible color change observable with naked eye. However, they also have some issues including the low sensitivity of assays and the complicated conjugation procedure of nucleic acids onto AuNPs. To overcome these limitations, there are three directions to solve the current problems : (I) to explore the surface chemistry of AuNPs for the modification of functionalized nucleic acid probes, (II) to improve the performance of colorimetric methods by using enzyme-free amplification based on nucleic acid-based nanostructures, and (III) to establish the easy visual detection of colorimetric signal. In the third year, these techniques will be integrated with the state-of-the-art of smart colorimetric sensor for the detection of lung cancer markers in saliva. The establishment of this novel colorimetric analysis method can not only provide the preliminary work and technical support for non-invasive cancer detection, but also present the new perspective and direction for the intelligent detection of other molecular medical diseases in the future.

Project ID:PA10907-2089
External Project ID:MOST109-2113-M182-004-MY2