PMID: 18203445Jan 22, 2008Paper

Early diagnosis of oral cancer based on the surface plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles.

International Journal of Nanomedicine
James Chen Yong KahMalini Carolene Olivo

Abstract

The high mortality rate in cancer such as oral squamous cell carcinoma is commonly attributed to the difficulties in detecting the disease at an early treatable stage. In this study, we exploited the ability of gold nanoparticles to undergo coupled surface plasmon resonance and set up strong electric fields when closely-spaced to improve the molecular contrast signal in reflectance-based imaging and also to enhance the Raman signal of bioanalytes in cancer. Colloidal gold nanoparticles were synthesized and conjugated to anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) for imaging. A self-assembled surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-active gold nanoparticle monolayer film was also developed as a biosensing surface using a simple drop-dry approach. We have shown that gold nanoparticles could elicit an optical contrast to discriminate between cancerous and normal cells and their conjugation with antibodies allowed them to map the expression of relevant biomarkers for molecular imaging under confocal reflectance microscopy. We have also shown that the SERS spectra of saliva from the closely-packed gold nanoparticles films was differentiable between those acquired from normal individuals and oral cancer patients, thus showing prom...Continue Reading

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