Highly Specific and Ultrasensitive Graphene-Enhanced Electrochemical Detection of Low-Abundance Tumor Cells Using Silica Nanoparticles Coated with Antibody-Conjugated Quantum Dots

A dual signal amplification immunosensing strategy that offers high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of low-abundance tumor cells was designed. High sensitivity was achieved by using graphene to modify the immunosensor surface to accelerate electron transfer and quantum dot (QD)-coated silica nanoparticles as tracing tags. High specificity was further obtained by the simultaneous measurement of two disease-specific biomarkers on the cell surface using different QD-coated silica nanoparticle tracers. The immunosensor was constructed by covalently immobilized capture antibodies on a chitosan/electrochemically reduced graphene oxide film-modified glass carbon electrode. Cells were captured with a sandwich-type immunoreaction and the different QD-coated silica nanoparticle tracers were captured on the surface of the cells. Each biorecognition event yields a distinct voltammetric peak, which position and size reflects the corresponding identity and amount of the respective antigen. This strategy was vividly demonstrated by the simultaneous immunoassay of EpCAM and GPC3 antigens on the surface of the human liver cancer cell line Hep3B using anti-EpCAM-CdTe- and anti-GPC3-ZnSe-coated silica nanoparticle tracers. The two tracers gave comparable sensitivity, and the immunosensor exhibited high sensitivity and specificity with excellent stability, reproducibility, and accuracy, indicating its wide range of potential applications in clinical and molecular diagnostics.