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The aim of task 1.4 within the EMPIR project 18HLT01 MetVesII is to produce low-RI solid particles with an effective RI between 1.37 and 1.42. To prepare these low-RI solid particles, polymer cores will be coated with a silica shell. Although the bulk RI of polymers, such as polystyrene (RI = 1.59) and PMMA (RI = 1.49), and fused silica (RI = 1.46) are higher than desired, an effective RI below 1.42 will be achieved by using a mesoporous silica shell with tuneable shell-thickness and a polymer core with sufficiently small size. This approach has four advantages: (1) monodisperse commercial polymer particles and silica shell chemistry are available, (2) low-RI solid particles will have a tuneable size and RI, (3) fluorescence can be added by incorporating fluorescent dyes into the polymer cores via an established staining procedure, and (4) fluorescent dyes within the polymer cores are shielded against influences from the sample matrix, e.g. fluorescence quenching effects altering the emission properties of the reference materials.
BAM provides leading expertise in preparation, characterisation and application of fluorescent reference standards and biomedical relevant nanomaterials, as well as in traceable, absolute, and quantitative fluorometric measurements of transparent and scattering systems in the ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectral region. BAM will prepare solid low-RI particles in WP1, will develop reference methods to determine the fluorescence intensity and RI of reference materials in WP2, and will measure the fluorescence intensity of EVs in biological test samples of WP3.
Standardisation of concentration measurements of extracellular vesicles for medical diagnoses
(2020)
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are cell-derived particles in body fluids, which have excellent potential as next generation biomarkers for the early diagnosis of common diseases, such as cancer and thrombosis. This project aims to tap into the clinical potential of EVs by developing traceable measurements of number concentration, size distribution, refractive index (RI) and fluorescence intensity of cell-specific EVs in human blood and urine.
To realise our aims, we will develop synthetic reference materials with physical properties resembling EVs (WP1), instrumentation and procedures to standardise EV measurements in clinical laboratories (WP2), and ready-to-use biological test samples (WP3). These will then be evaluated in an inter-laboratory comparison study across a range (>20) of standard flow cytometers in clinical labs (WP4).
Immunoassays are an important field of in vitro diagnostics, as they allow for a fast and highly sensitive detection of many biologically and diagnostically relevant analytes such as proteins, hormones, and pharmaceuticals. Fluorescence immunoassays (FIA), where the antibodies and/or antigens are labeled with luminescent reporters, can be easily read out directly by measuring the intensity, decay time, or polarization of the emitted light. Moreover, FIA enable the simultaneous detection of different analytes within a single sample (multiplexing) and are particularly suited for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics and high throughput screening (HTS). The application of luminescent nanoparticles as reporters in FIA could further improve assay sensitivity, as several 100 to 1000 luminophores can be incorporated or attached to such nanoscale carriers, thereby amplifying their absorption and/or emission signals simply by increasing the number of dye molecules.
Although dye-loaded polymeric and silica nanoparticles have been increasingly used as reporters in immunoassays, achievable signal amplification factors related to the use of particle reporters are still difficult to predict and quantify, which also hampers the comparability of different nanoscale reporters. To overcome this challenge, we performed a systematic comparison of spectroscopically and analytically well characterized particle labels in a homogeneous sandwich immunoassay format for the detection of the common inflammation biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP). Hereby, we studied the influence of particle parameters like size, surface chemistry, and dye loading concentration for different dye classes, i.e. organic dyes and metal ligand complexes, varying in their signal-relevant spectroscopic properties (molar absorption coefficients, photoluminescence quantum yields, Stokes shifts, and emission decay times), for different detection schemes (direct read-out vs. dye extraction). The emitters applied were chosen to be commercially available for a reasonable price, to absorb between 400 nm and 450 nm, and to emit in the visible region, as these parameters are accessible with most established microplate readers. Based upon our findings, we highlight the advantages and limitations of nanoscale reporters with respect to the choice of suitable particles, encoding dyes, and detection strategies, and compare the achievable sensitivities and dynamic ranges for our CRP model immunoassay.
Nanomaterials are used in many different applications in the material and life sciences. Examples are optical reporters, barcodes, and nanosensors, magnetic and optical contrast agents, and catalysts. Due to their small size and large surface area, there are also concerns about their interaction with and uptake by biological systems. This has initiated an ever increasing number of cyctoxicity studies of nanomaterials of different chemical composition and surface chemistry, but until now, the toxicological results presented by different research groups often do not address or differ regarding a potential genotoxicity of these nanomaterials. This underlines the need for a standardized test procedure to detect genotoxicity.1,2
Aiming at the development of fast, easy to use, and automatable microscopic methods for the determination of the genotoxicity of different types of nanoparticles, we assess the potential of the fluorometric γH2AX assay for this purpose. This assay, which can be run on an automated microscopic detection system, relies on the determination of DNA double strand breaks as a sign for genotoxicity.3 Here, we present first results obtained with broadly used nanomaterials like CdSe/CdS and InP/ZnS quantum dots as well as iron oxide, gold, and polymer particles of different surface chemistry with previously tested colloidal stability. These studies will be also used to establish nanomaterials as positive and negative genotoxicity controls or standards for assay performance validation for users of this fluorometric genotoxicity assay. In the future, after proper validation, this microscopic platform technology will be expanded to other typical toxicity assays.
References. (1) Landsiedel, R.; Kapp, M. D.; Schulz, M.; Wiench, K.; Oesch, F., Reviews in Mutation Research 2009, 681, 241-258. (2) Henriksen-Lacey, M.; Carregal-Romero, S.; Liz-Marzán, L. M., Bioconjugate Chem. 2016, 28, 212-221. (3) Willitzki, A.; Lorenz, S.; Hiemann, R.; Guttek, K.; Goihl, A.; Hartig, R.; Conrad, K.; Feist, E.; Sack, U.; Schierack, P., Cytometry Part A 2013, 83, 1017-1026.