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Colorimetric/SERS dual-channel nanoprobe for reactive oxygen species monitoring in elucidating the mechanism of chemotherapeutic drugs action on cancer cells

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Abstract

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in drug-induced cytotoxicity by regulating cell signaling, inducing oxidative stress, and damaging the DNA and proteins. Examining ROS production in cells under the stimulation of chemotherapeutic drugs is of great importance for understanding the ROS roles and identifying the mechanism of drug-induced cytotoxicity. Here, a silver/gold (Ag/Au) nanoshell-based colorimetric and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) dual-response nanoprobe was proposed for ROS sensing on the basis of Ag etching. In this study, as a kind of ROS, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was detected by the prepared nanoprobe. The linear ranges of 0.5–100 μM with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.343 μM for the colorimetric determination and 1–50 μM with LOD of 0.294 μM for SERS determination were achieved. The detection of cellular ROS concentration after stimulation by cisplatin, paclitaxel, doxorubicin, and 5-fluorouracil was validated by the nanoprobe. The nanoprobe could also be used to detect the signal pathway of ROS production by cisplatin stimulation. This study provided a simple and novel dual-response nanoplatform for detecting and monitoring ROS in cells, which holds great potential for elucidating the mechanism of occurrence and treatment of ROS-involved diseases.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Xuerui Fu from Hebei Medical University Core Facilities and Centers for confocal fluorescent measurements.

Funding

This work was supported by the Postdoctoral Fund of Hebei Medical University, Postdoctoral Fund of Hebei Province (B2021003040), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (Nos. H2020206416, B2021206005, B2019206437), the Youth Top Talent Project of Hebei Province Higher Education (Nos. BJ2021050, BJ2020034), and the Chunyu Project Outstanding Youth Fund of Hebei Medical University (Nos. CYYQ2021003, CYYQ201903).

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Author notes

  1. Mi Wang and Yanting Shen contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hebei Province Key Laboratory of Innovative Drug Research and Evaluation, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, 050017, People’s Republic of China

    Mi Wang, Yanting Shen, Xiaoxiao Hu, Yanyan Zhu & Jing Wang

  2. Department of Pharmacy, Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang, 050051, People’s Republic of China

    Mi Wang

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  1. Mi Wang
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  3. Xiaoxiao Hu
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Contributions

MW: methodology, data curation, investigation, software, validation, and writing—original draft preparation. YS: methodology, investigation, data curation, software, and writing—review and editing. XH: data curation, software, and validation. YZ: data curation, software, and validation. JW: conceptualization, visualization, supervision, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Jing Wang.

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Wang, M., Shen, Y., Hu, X. et al. Colorimetric/SERS dual-channel nanoprobe for reactive oxygen species monitoring in elucidating the mechanism of chemotherapeutic drugs action on cancer cells. Microchim Acta 189, 351 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-022-05451-x

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