Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopic detection and differentiation of lung cancer cell lines (A549, H1229) and normal cell line (AT II) based on gold nanostar substrates

Abstract

In this paper, a non-invasive, simple and efficient approach is constructed to make clean gold nanostar substrates with higher enhancement effect, homogeneous surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity and high reproducibility, which are the assembly of gold nanostars based on the electrostatically assisted APTES-functionalized surface-assembly method. The obtained substrates enable us to successfully compare and distinguish two lung cancer cell lines [human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line (A549), human non-small cell lung cancer cell line (H1229)] and one normal lung cell line [human type II alveolar epithelial cell line (AT II)] through SERS spectra. The difference spectra (A549 – H1229, A549 – AT II and H1229 – AT II) among the three cell lines are studied to better interpret the spectral differences and gain insight into the biochemical variation. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) score plots of the SERS spectra are also used to better view the differences among these three cell lines. This sensitive, efficient and non-invasive detection method, based on gold nanostar substrates, will have great potential for the differentiation of living cells and play an important role in the early diagnosis and treatment of cancers.