Plasmonic gap-enhanced Raman tag nanorods for imaging 3D pancreatic spheroids using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and darkfield microscopy

Multi-Shell Nanourchin-Integrated Dual Mode Lateral Flow Immunoassay for Sensitive and Rapid Detection of Clinical Cardiac Myosin-Binding Protein C

Cardiac myosin-binding protein C (cMyBP-C) is a novel cardiac marker of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and acute cardiac injuries (ACI). Construction of point-of-care testing techniques capable of sensing cMyBP-C with high sensitivity and precision is urgently needed. Herein, we synthesized an Au@NGQDs@Au/Ag multi-shell nanoUrchins (MSNUs), and then applied it in a colorimetric/SERS dual-mode immunoassay for detection of cMyBP-C. The MSNUs displayed superior stability, colorimetric brightness, and SERS enhancement ability with an enhanced factor of 5.4 × 109, which were beneficial to improve the detection capability of test strips. The developed MSNU-based test strips can achieve an ultrasensitive immunochromatographic assay of cMyBP-C in both colorimetric and SERS modes with the limits of detection as low as 19.3 and 0.77 pg/mL, respectively. Strikingly, this strip was successfully applied to analyze actual plasma samples with significantly better sensitivity, negative predictive value, and accuracy than commercially available gold test strips. Notably, this method possessed a wide range of application scenarios via combining with a color recognizer application named Color Grab on the smartphone, which can meet various needs of different users. Overall, our MSNU-based test strip as a mobile health monitoring tool shows excellent sensitivity, reproducibility, and rapid detection of the cMyBP-C, which holds great potential for the early clinic diagnosis of AMI and ACI.

Biobanked Glioblastoma Patient-Derived Organoids as a Precision Medicine Model to Study Inhibition of Invasion

Glioblastoma (GBM) is highly resistant to treatment and invasion into the surrounding brain is a cancer hallmark that leads to recurrence despite surgical resection. With the emergence of precision medicine, patient-derived 3D systems are considered potentially robust GBM preclinical models. In this study, we screened a library of 22 anti-invasive compounds (i.e., NF-kB, GSK-3-B, COX-2, and tubulin inhibitors) using glioblastoma U-251 MG cell spheroids. We evaluated toxicity and invasion inhibition using a 3D Matrigel invasion assay. We next selected three compounds that inhibited invasion and screened them in patient-derived glioblastoma organoids (GBOs). We developed a platform using available macros for FIJI/ImageJ to quantify invasion from the outer margin of organoids. Our data demonstrated that a high-throughput invasion screening can be done using both an established cell line and patient-derived 3D model systems. Tubulin inhibitor compounds had the best efficacy with U-251 MG cells, however, in ex vivo patient organoids the results were highly variable. Our results indicate that the efficacy of compounds is highly related to patient intra and inter-tumor heterogeneity. These results indicate that such models can be used to evaluate personal oncology therapeutic strategies.

Non-invasive analysis of pancreas organoids in synthetic hydrogels defines material-cell interactions and luminal composition

The cultivation of cells forming three-dimensional structures like organoids holds great potential in different fields of life sciences and is gaining increasing interest with regards to clinical applications and personalised medicine. However, conventional hydrogels used as cell cultivation matrices (e.g. Matrigel®) contain animal-derived components in varying quantities, implicating low reproducibility of experiments and limited applicability for clinical use. Based on the strong need for developing novel, well defined, and animal-free hydrogels for 3D cell cultures, this study presents a comprehensive analysis of pancreas organoid cultivation in two synthetic hydrogels. Besides established visualisation techniques to monitor organoid formation and growth, confocal Raman microscopy was used for the first time to evaluate the gel matrices and organoid formation within the gels. The approach revealed so far not accessible information about material-cell interactions and the composition of the organoid lumen in a non-invasive and label-free manner. Confocal Raman microscopy thereby enabled a systematic characterisation of different hydrogels with respect to cell culture compatibility and allowed for the rational selection of a hydrogel formulation to serve as a synthetic and fully defined alternative to animal-derived cultivation matrices.