Combining Holographic Optical Tweezers with Upconversion Luminescence Encoding: Imaging-Based Stable Suspension Array for Sensitive Responding of Dual Cancer Biomarkers

Abstract

Establishment of a stable analytical methodology with high-quality results is an urgent need for screening cancer biomarkers in early diagnosis of cancer. In this study, we incorporate holographic optical tweezers with upconversion luminescence encoding to design an imageable suspension array and apply it to conduct the detection of two liver cancer related biomarkers, carcinoembryonic antigen and alpha fetal protein. This bead-based assay is actualized by forming a bead array with holographic optical tweezers and synchronously exciting the upconversion luminescence of corresponding trapped complex beads fabricated with a simple one-step sandwich immunological recognition. Owing to the fact that these flowing beads are stably trapped in the focal plane of the objective lens which tightly converges the array of the laser beams by splitting a 980 nm beam using a diffraction optical element, a fairly stable excitation condition is achieved to provide reliable assay results. By further taking advantage of the eminent encoding capability of upconversion nanoparticles and the extremely low background signals of anti-Stokes luminescence, the two targets are well-identified and simultaneously detected with quite sound sensitivity and specificity. Moreover, the potential on-demand clinical application is presented by employing this approach to respond the targets toward complex matrices such as serum and tissue samples, offering a new alternative for cancer diagnosis technology.

Optical tweezers: theory and practice

“…The particles then were held in a two-dimensional array and investigated using Upconversion Luminescence Encoding technique. The use of HOT greatly improved the sensitivity, specificity and reliability of the biomarkers detection, offering a new alternative for cancer diagnosis technology [167].…”

Advanced Biophotonics Techniques: The Role of Optical Tweezers for Cells and Molecules Manipulation Associated With Cancer

“…This method could become equivalent with the conventional methods such as flow cytometry without using fluorescent-based markers. Moreover, holographic optical tweezers can be combined with upconversion luminescence encoding for screening cancer biomarkers [101]. A bead array of carboxyl functionalized polystyrene beads was formed and stay stable with holographic optical tweezers.…”

“…UCNPs are able to excited from near-infrared (NIR) light region and emitted in the visible region with extremely low background luminescence. This imaging-based stable suspension array offers the detection of dual cancer biomarkers with quite sensitivity and specificity providing a new alternative method for cancer diagnosis [101].…”

Optical Manipulation of Lanthanide-Doped Nanoparticles: How to Overcome Their Limitations

“…Moreover, their polarized emission allows the measurement of the viscosity of the cytoplasm and the detection of single cells (Rodríguez-Sevilla et al, 2016b ; Ortiz-Rivero et al, 2019 ). Other applications include the measurement of the size of bacteria and the labeling of RNA and cancer biomarkers for their quantification in bioassays (Li et al, 2017 , 2018 ; Xin et al, 2017 ).…”