The development of powerful techniques to detect cancer cells at early stages plays a notable role in diagnosing and prognosing cancer patients and reducing mortality. This paper reports on a novel functional DNA nanoassembly capable of detecting cancer cells based on structural DNA nanotechnology. DNA nanoassemblies were constructed by the self-assembly of a DNA concatemer to a plenty of sticky-ended three-way junctions. While an aptamer moiety guided the nanoassembly to the target cancer cell, the peroxidase-mimicking DNAzymes embedded in the nanoassemblies were used as the sensing element to produce colorimetric signals. As proof-of-concept, as low as 175 cancer cells were detected by the assay, and color change was clearly distinguished by the naked eyes. The proposed system enjoys potential applications for point-of-care cancer diagnosis, with its excellent sensitivity and selectivity.

中文翻译：

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适配体整合的 DNA 纳米组装：检测癌细胞的简单而灵敏的 DNA 框架

在早期阶段检测癌细胞的强大技术的发展在诊断和预测癌症患者以及降低死亡率方面发挥着显着作用。本文报道了一种基于结构 DNA 纳米技术能够检测癌细胞的新型功能性 DNA 纳米组装。DNA 纳米组装体是通过将 DNA 串联体自组装成大量粘性末端三向连接点而构建的。虽然适体部分引导纳米组装到目标癌细胞，但嵌入纳米组装中的模拟过氧化物酶的 DNA 酶被用作传感元件以产生比色信号。作为概念验证，该测定检测到低至 175 个癌细胞，肉眼可以清楚地区分颜色变化。所提议的系统具有用于床旁癌症诊断的潜在应用，