Issue 15, 2020

Surface design of photon-upconversion nanoparticles for high-contrast immunocytochemistry

Abstract

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunocytochemistry (ICC) are routinely employed for the microscopic identification and diagnosis of cancerous cells in histological tissues and cell cultures. The maximally attainable contrast of conventional histological staining techniques, however, is low. While the anti-Stokes emission of photon-upconversion nanoparticles (UCNP) can efficiently eliminate optical background interference, excluding non-specific interactions of the label with the histological sample is equally important for specific immunolabeling. To address both requirements, we have designed and characterized several UCNP-based nanoconjugates as labels for the highly specific detection of the cancer biomarker HER2 on various breast cancer cell lines. An optimized streptavidin-PEG-neridronate-UCNP conjugate provided an unsurpassed signal-to-background ratio of 319, which was 50-fold better than conventional fluorescent labeling under the same experimental conditions. In combination, the absence of optical interference and non-specific binding lays the foundation for computer-based data evaluation in digital pathology.

Graphical abstract: Surface design of photon-upconversion nanoparticles for high-contrast immunocytochemistry

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 dec 2019
Accepted
11 mar 2020
First published
20 mar 2020

Nanoscale, 2020,12, 8303-8313

Surface design of photon-upconversion nanoparticles for high-contrast immunocytochemistry

Z. Farka, M. J. Mickert, Z. Mikušová, A. Hlaváček, P. Bouchalová, W. Xu, P. Bouchal, P. Skládal and H. H. Gorris, Nanoscale, 2020, 12, 8303 DOI: 10.1039/C9NR10568A

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