The accurate discrimination of specific protein levels in the blood of cancer patients is of great importance in clinical diagnostics and prognosis. Here, we report a double-aptamer sandwich strategy on plasmonic magnetic beads (MBs) for a dual-reporter surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) assay for assessing abnormal thrombin (TB) levels in the blood plasma of cancer patients. This SERS assay demonstrated a linear analysis range of 20–400 pM in serum with a limit of detection as low as 20 pM, and to the best of our knowledge, this represents the first attempt to highly stably discriminate an abnormal TB level in the plasma of clinical cancer patients. Two recognition elements of TB aptamers provided high specificity and the dual-reporter assay demonstrated greatly reduced false-positive signals. The sandwich complex produced an efficient SERS “hot spot” to make up for the flaws of the insufficient enhancement of monomer metal nanoparticles. The plasmonic MBs enabled the direct tracking of ultratrace proteins in plasma while avoiding complicated pretreatment with only a few washing steps required. As a preliminary exploration, our report details a new potential tool with high sensitivity, selectivity, and practicality for disease-related protein testing in clinical diagnostics and prognosis.

中文翻译：

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癌症患者血浆中异常凝血酶水平的高度稳定的表面增强拉曼光谱分析

准确区分癌症患者血液中的特定蛋白质水平对于临床诊断和预后具有重要意义。在这里，我们报告了等离子体磁珠 (MB) 上的双适体夹心策略，用于双报告分子表面增强拉曼光谱 (SERS) 测定，用于评估癌症患者血浆中的异常凝血酶 (TB) 水平。该 SERS 检测表明血清中的线性分析范围为 20-400 pM，检测限低至 20 pM，据我们所知，这是首次尝试高度稳定地区分血浆中的异常 TB 水平临床癌症患者。TB 适配体的两个识别元件提供了高特异性，双报告基因检测显示大大减少了假阳性信号。夹心复合物产生了高效的SERS“热点”，弥补了单体金属纳米粒子增强不足的缺陷。等离子体 MB 能够直接跟踪血浆中的超痕量蛋白质，同时避免复杂的预处理，只需几个洗涤步骤。作为初步探索，我们的报告详细介绍了一种新的潜在工具，该工具具有高灵敏度、选择性和实用性，可用于临床诊断和预后中的疾病相关蛋白质检测。