美国克拉克森大学纳米工程和生物技术实验室中心Igor Sokolov课题组开发出一种新的宫颈癌检测方法——非特异性的硅珠黏附细胞法(nonspecific adhesion of silica beads to cells)。这篇研究报告发表在Small杂志上。
这项研究是基于课题组之前发表在Nature Nanotechnology杂志的研究报告,他们观察到,正常的和发生癌变的宫颈上皮细胞表面存在着某些之前未发现的差异。
在这项研究中,研究人员将硅珠连接到原子力显微镜(atomic force microscopy,AFM)的旋臂上,从而使硅珠黏附在细胞表面,硅珠和细胞分离所需的的黏附力的大小可以通过测量得到。黏附能力越高的细胞表面黏住的硅珠越多。
根据细胞表面的荧光硅珠粒子的数目以及荧光的亮度轻易区别出癌细胞和正常细胞。试验中所使用的超亮的荧光硅珠(ultrabright fluorescent silica particles)也是Sokolov课题组开发出来的。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐原始出处:
Small Volume 5 Issue 20, Pages 2277 - 2284
Towards Nonspecific Detection of Malignant Cervical Cells with Fluorescent Silica Beads
Swaminathan Iyer 1 2, Craig D. Woodworth 3 5, Ravi M. Gaikwad 1, Yaroslav Y. Kievsky 1 4, Igor Sokolov 1 5 *
1Department of Physics Clarkson University Potsdam, NY 13699 (USA)
2Department of Chemistry School of Biomedical, Biomolecular, and Chemical Sciences The University of Western Australia Crawley, WA (Australia)
3Department of Biology, NanoBio Laboratory (NABLAB) Clarkson University Potsdam, NY 13699 (USA)
4NRC Ottawa, ON, K1A 0R6 (Canada)
5Nanoengineering and Biotechnology Laboratories Center (NABLAB) Clarkson University Potsdam, NY 13699 (USA)vd
To date, the methods for detection of cancer cells are mostly based on traditional techniques used in biology, such as visual identification of malignant changes, cell-growth analysis, specific ligand-receptor labeling, or genetic tests. Despite being well developed, these methods are either insufficiently accurate or require a lengthy complicated analysis. A search for alternative methods for the detection of cancer cells may be a fruitful approach. Proposed here is a novel method for the detection of cancer cells in vitro, which is based on nonspecific adhesion of silica beads to cells. First, atomic force microscopy is used to study the adhesion of single silica beads to malignant and normal cells cultured from human cervix. It is found that adhesion depends on the time of contact, and can be statistically different for malignant and normal cells. Using these data, an optical method utilizing fluorescent silica beads is developed, which is based on detection of the difference in the number of adherent particles. The method is tested using primary cells cultured from cervical tissues of three healthy individuals and three patients with cervical cancer. The method shows sufficiently high sensitivity for cancer to make it interesting to perform further statistical tests.