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Nowadays, cancer is one of the most dangerous and deadly disease all around the world. Cancer that is diagnosed at early stages is more likely to be treated successfully. Treatment of progressed cancer is very difficult, and generally surviving rates are much lower. Therefore, much research has been focused on developing non-invasive methods for detection of cancer and monitoring of its progress. Within this contribution, we present a novel strategy for selective isolation and detection of breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and BT-20) based on surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). A simplified protocol based on cell-aptamer interaction has been developed in which core-shell (Au@Fe 3 O 4 ) nanoparticles (CSNs) were functionalized with a mucin 1 (MUC1) specific aptamer (Apt1) to capture cells through the interaction between Apt1 and overexpressed protein (MUC1) on the surface of the tumor cells. Meanwhile, a SERS nano-tag, synthesized by the conjugation of Apt1 to the surface of BSA coated and with 4-mercaptopyridine (4-Mpy) functionalized gold nanoparticles, was used to detect the isolated cells. As a conclusion, the proposed strategy can be extended to isolate and detect cells more precisely based on the detection of different kinds of biomarkers on the surface of cancer cells, simultaneously., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper describes the construction of a silver-based LSPR biosensor for endotoxin detection. We used GLAD method to procure reproducible silver nanocolumns. In this work, the silver nanostructures were considerably stabilized by a SAM of MPA, and the limit of detection of biosensor was measured to be 340 pg/ml for endotoxin E. coli. Considering endotoxin B. abortus as the second type of endotoxin contamination in our target samples (HBs-ag produced in Institute Pasteur, Iran), we investigated selectivity of the biosensor in various experiments. We showed that this biosensor can selectively detect both types of endotoxins compared to other biological species. Overall, this study proposes that LSPR biosensing can be considered as a sensitive, simple, and label-free method for endotoxin detection in the quality control laboratories., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The mechanism of adsorption of single and double stranded DNAs on colloidal gold and silver nanoparticles has been studied by measuring the resistance of the nanoparticles, surrounded by various oligonucleotides, against salt induced aggregation. It is shown that both single and double stranded DNAs can be adsorbed on the metal nanoparticles and the adsorption strength is determined by the interaction between various bases of DNA and the nanoparticles. By changing the salt concentration, the difference between adsorption of various DNA strands on the nanoparticles can be specified. The results indicate that a key parameter in success of a sensing assay of DNA hybridization is the salt concentration which should be greater than a minimum threshold depending on the nanoparticles characteristics. We have also investigated the interaction mechanism between various DNA bases with the metal nanoparticles. For both gold and silver nanoparticles, adenine has the highest and thymine has the lowest attachment to the nanoparticles. From surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) data of various bases in the presence of gold nanoparticles, the probable interaction points in the bases with the nanoparticles have been determined, which are mainly the nitrogen sites of these oligonucleotides., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The adsorption of single and double stranded DNA on colloidal silver nanoparticles has been studied to investigate the effects of surface charge of the nanoparticles, the composition of the oligonucleotide and its length on the adsorption characteristics. The results explain that the nanoparticle surface charge is a key parameter determining the propensity of oligonucleotides to adsorb on nanoparticles. The adsorption also depends on the length and composition of oligonucleotide. The protective effects of both single and double stranded DNA against salt-induced aggregation dramatically increase as the DNA length increases. In contrast to other available reports, we observed that long oligonucleotides (single-stranded and double stranded) can well be adsorbed on the nanoparticles as the short ones leading to almost complete protection of nanoparticles against salt induced aggregation and hence are not suitable for the sensing applications. Finally, the light scattering from the Ag nanoparticles has been simulated and the results compared with the experiments. Our understanding should improve development of colorimetric assays for DNA detection based on aggregation of unmodified metallic nanoparticles., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)