Electrochemical Cytosensor Based on a Gold Nanostar-Decorated Graphene Oxide Platform for Gastric Cancer Cell Detection

Abstract

Effectively capturing and sensitively detecting cancer cells are critical to clinical diagnosis and cancer therapy. In this work, we prepared gold nanostar-decorated graphene oxide (GO-AuNSs) nanocomposites using a ultraviolet (UV)-induced strategy, and then modified them with a layer of bio-complex rBSA-FA (coupled reduced bovine serum albumin with folic acid) to generate GO-AuNSs@rBSA-FA nanocomposites. Herein, the application of GO and AuNSs not only strengthened the conductivity of the sensing platform but also guaranteed nanocomposites with biocompatible performance. Moreover, the adopted rBSA-FA layer could effectively enhance the stability and specificity towards gastric cancer cells (MGC-803). According to a systemic construction procedure, a novel electrochemical cytosensor based on GO-AuNSs@rBSA-FA was fabricated for MGC-803 cell detection. With the assistance of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), the cytosensor reached a detection limit of 100 cell/mL in a wide linear range of 3 × 102~7 × 106 cell/mL towards MGC-803 cells. The good electrochemical characteristics for the cancer cell analysis indicate a promising prospect of this electrochemical cytosensor in clinical cancer diagnosis.