2277P - A colorimetric biosensor to track Trop-2 status of tumor cells for diagnosis of breast cancer

Background

The emergence of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) targeting trophoblast cell-surface antigen-2 (Trop-2) has reshaped the therapeutic landscape of advanced breast cancer. Accurate profiling of the Trop-2 status of tumor cells can facilitate the identification of patients who will benefit from Trop-2-targeting therapy; however limited analytical method has hindered this process.

Methods

In this study, we have proposed a specific and sensitive biosensor for visual tracking of the Trop-2 status of breast cancer cells based on tetrahedral DNA nanostructure (TDN)-decorated Fe-based metal-organic framework nanoparticles (TDN-PCN-222 (Fe)).

Results

In the design, a dual-aptamer-assisted biomimetic capture strategy shows high capture efficiency while maintaining the viability and original phenotype of captured cells, ensuring the accurate profiling of the Trop-2 status. Meanwhile, by using the high intrinsic peroxidase activity and excellent targeting ability of Trop-2-specific aptamer-linked TDN-PCN-222 (Fe), specific detection of Trop-2-positive tumor cells can be achieved with a limit of detection (LOD) of 10 cells/mL, and the Trop-2 status of tumor cells can be visually tracked. Moreover, the proposed biosensor has been successfully used for tracking the Trop-2 status of tumor cells in breast cancer tissues, suggesting that our method has great promise for clinical applications.

Conclusions

a sensitive and specific colorimetric biosensor was proposed in this work for visually tracking the Trop-2 status of tumor cells. This sensor has been used for the visualized tracking of Trop-2 status of different cancer cell lines as well as breast cancer tumor cells. Therefore, the proposed sensor has considerable potential for visualized tracking of various drug targets on tumor cells from cancerous tissues or the circulating system, and this work may provide an unprecedented method with great promise for the companion diagnosis of Trop-2 ADCs.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.