Guo Dongsheng Group, School of chemistry, Nankai University has made important progress in the field of "calixarene super sensitive and specific fluorescence detection of cancer markers"

Professor Guo Dongsheng's research group of School of chemistry, Nankai University has been engaged in the research of supramolecular chemistry of calixarenes Based on the design and synthesis of new water-soluble calixarene derivatives, the basic physical and chemical properties such as molecular recognition and assembly are emphatically investigated, and then they are applied to the field of biomedicine, including biosensor, regulatory protein structure / activity, drug delivery and supramolecular light diagnosis and treatment, so as to realize the diagnosis and treatment of a series of major diseases Recently, the research group has successfully applied the new guanidine calixarene designed to the field of biosensor, and realized the super sensitive and specific detection of lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a serum marker of ovarian cancer (Fig 1) Figure 1 Schematic diagram of the mechanism of calixarene super sensitive and specific fluorescence detection of cancer markers LPA source: chem SCI Quantitative detection of cancer markers in blood is of great scientific significance and practical application value for early diagnosis of cancer and improvement of patient survival rate LPA is an ideal marker for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer and other gynecological malignancies, but its content in the blood is very low (0.1-63.2 μ m), and there are many interferences in the blood, so it is difficult to detect LPA At present, most methods of LPA detection need precise instruments and complex operations In recent years, people have paid more and more attention to spectroscopy because of its low cost, simple operation and high sensitivity In order to achieve high sensitivity and specific spectral detection of LPA, it is a great challenge to design and synthesize artificial receptors with strong selective binding to LPA Figure 2 Synthesis route of guanidine calixarenes and source of binding with LPA: Professor Guo Dongsheng's research group of School of chemistry, Nankai University constructed a supramolecular sensing system based on calixarenes to detect LPA in serum Firstly, a novel guanidine modified calixarene receptor was designed and synthesized according to the structural characteristics of LPA, and its binding behavior with LPA was investigated in detail The experimental results show that the calixarenes can be π and other synergistic actions achieve strong bonding to LPA, and the binding constant is as high as nm (Fig 2) The chemical basis for the analysis and detection of LPA is the design and synthesis of its strong selective binding artificial receptor Figure 3 Qualitative and quantitative measurement source of LPA: chem SCI With the aid of indicator displacement assay, the author has realized the quantitative detection of LPA in buffer solution, with the detection limit as low as 5.6 nm The specific detection of LPA was realized by differential sensing (Figure 3) On this basis, the supramolecular sensing system was applied to the detection of LPA in serum Without any treatment of serum, LPA can be detected directly and quantitatively The detection limit is as low as 1.7 μ m, which meets the needs of clinical diagnosis By comparing the blood samples of ovarian cancer mice and normal mice, it was found that the fluorescence signal showed significant difference, that is, the super molecular sensing system can effectively distinguish the cancer blood and normal blood This supramolecular sensing method based on calixarene molecular recognition has a broad application prospect in the early diagnosis of gynecological malignant tumors such as ovarian cancer This research achievement has been applied for the national invention patent (201711391952.0), and recently published on chem SCI The first author of this article is Zheng Zhe, a doctoral candidate of Nankai University, and the corresponding author is Professor Guo Dongsheng Paper link: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/article landing/2018/sc/c7sc04989gා! Introduction of Professor Guo Dongsheng: http://chem.nankai.edu.cn/ejym_wide ASPX? M = 1.1 & T = 3 & n = 006800