Carbon dot-based fluorescent antibody nanoprobes as brain tumour glioblastoma diagnostics

Abstract

The development of efficient and sensitive tools for the detection of brain cancer in patients is of the utmost importance particularly because many of these tumours go undiagnosed until the...

Multicolour dual-emission Photoluminescent Carbon Dots à la carte for biomedical applications

“…We have recently reported a protocol for the generation of blue-emitting CDs-antibody conjugates to be used for the immunohistochemical staining of human brain tissue of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma. [34] GFAP immunostaining is the most commonly used method to examine the distribution of astrocytes and the hypertrophy of astrocytes in response to neural degeneration or injury as in the development of GBM. [44] Having now access to CDs with dual emission, we decided to explore the feasibility of using the newly developed CDs in a clinical application.…”

“…General synthetic Ab-conjugation strategy onto Cy:U-CDs as previously described (see ESI for full details). [34] The DBCOfunctionalysed Cy:U-CDs were then reacted with N3-modified anti-glial fibrillary acidic protein Abs to produce Ab-Cy:U-CD adducts that could be used for the detection of glial fibrillary acidic protein, a tumour marker present in brain tissues of patients affected with glioblastomas (WHO grade 4 tumour) via immunostaining applications. Gel electrophoresis was used to confirm Ab-conjugation onto the CDs (Figure S23 We then examined the presence of GFAP in 3 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded biopsy brain tumour samples from different patients (2 glioblastomas, IDH wildtype, WHO Grade 4 and 1 negative control schwannoma, WHO Grade I, see ESI Table S6) using the conjugated antibody Ab-Cy:U-CD (Scheme 2).…”

“…We recently reported a practical and general method for the labelling of proteins and antibodies with blue emissive fluorescent carbon dots (CD) to generate antibody (Ab)-CD probes that could be used for the successful immunohistochemical staining of human brain tissues of patients with GBM. [34] However, the inherent autofluorescence of many tissues and cells can sometimes be problematic for the detection of a particular exogenous fluorophore such as blue-emitting CDs. [35] In this context, dual-emission fluorescent probes are particularly attractive in comparison to those with a single emission centre, since these type of nanomaterials can help improve the sensitivity of detection and minimise background interference by using dual imaging channels [36] and therefore such probes will be essential to improving clinical diagnostics.…”

Carbon-based glyco-nanoplatforms: towards the next generation of glycan-based multivalent probes

“…CD nanoparticles have found a great number of applications as anticancer agents. Indeed, their tunable fluorescence emission profiles, 125 their versatility as anticancer agents through PTT, 126 PDT, 127 as nanocarriers for drugs 128 and gene delivery, 129 and as immunostimulants 130 have revealed these materials to be an ideal tool for cancer theranostics. Moreover, the use of key glycan epitopes decorating the surface of CDs can improve the cellular targeting selectivity toward malignant cells expressing lectins and in general glycan-binding receptors ( e.g.…”

Recent advances in NIR-II fluorescence based theranostic approaches for glioma

“…In the case of gliomas, fluorescence has garnered considerable attention for its applicability in tumor diagnosis and therapy. Several fluorophores have been applied to gliomas for imaging, drug delivery, and therapy ( Ji et al, 2018 ; Mishchenko et al, 2020 ; Ghirardello et al, 2022 ; Xiang et al, 2022 ). However, the emissive range of these fluorophores is within the visible light spectrum (380–700 nm), which leads to poor tissue penetration owing to light absorption and scattering and autofluorescence.…”