Conclusion
The NAISA nanozyme was allowed to rapidly profile multiple exosomal proteins and could have great promise for early HCC diagnosis and identification of other cancer types.
Methods
Exosomes were engineered with DSPE-PEG-SH through hydrophobic interaction, and then were assembled with gold nanoparticles (2 nm) to produce Exo@Au nanozyme. The proteins on Exo@Au could be selectively captured by their specific antibodies seeded into a 96-well plate. The immobilized Exo@Au shows peroxidase-like activity to perform colorimetric assays by reaction with 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) and H2O2. The protein levels of exosomes were recorded on a microplate reader.
Results
The NAISA platform is capable of profiling multiple exosomal proteins from both cancer cell lines and clinical samples. The expression levels of exosomal proteins, such as CD63, CEA, GPC-3, PD-L1 and HER2, were used to classify different cancer cell lines. Moreover, the protein profiles have been applied to differentiate healthy donors, hepatitis B patients, and hepatic cell carcinoma (HCC) patients with high accuracy.