Chemie und Prozesstechnik
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Extracellular vesicles (EV) are cell-derived particles in body fluids, which have excellent potential as next-generation biomarkers. The exploitation of EV requires reliable measurements, which is currently very difficult, as most EV are smaller than 200 nm. At present, flow cytometry (FCM) is the most appropriate technique for EV analysis in biological samples, as FCM is readily available in many clinical laboratories and allows to identify cell-specific EV at high throughput. However, due to technical variations between different FCM instruments, EV concentration measurements are currently not well comparable between most laboratories. Therefore, EV reference materials and standardized reference methods are urgently needed to calibrate flow rate, light scattering intensity, and fluorescence intensity of FCM in the sub-micrometer size range. This requires a better matching of the optical properties of calibration beads and EV as can be realized with current polystyrene calibration beads.
The EMPIR project 18HLT01 “MetVes II” aims to develop synthetic reference materials and traceable measurement methods to standardize EV measurements. The reference materials should resemble EV properties, so that calibrations are reliable and do not require a change of acquisition settings. Hence, the reference materials should contain particles with a traceable number concentration in the range of 109–1012 particles/mL to calibrate flow rate, a traceable size with discrete diameters between 50–1000 nm and a refractive index (RI) in the range of 1.37–1.42 to calibrate scattering intensity, and a traceable fluorescence intensity between 100–100,000 molecules of equivalent soluble fluorochromes (MESF). At BAM, various approaches to prepare such low-RI nanometer-sized reference materials will be studied, preliminary results of the primary characterization of these candidate reference particles will be presented, and possible applications besides FCM-based EV detection will be outlined.
Multiplexed encoding schemes of nano- and micrometer sized particles with fluorescent dyes or quantum dots (QDs) and their optical detection, are of increasing interest for applications in the life sciences, for example in flow cytometry. Almost all strategies utilizing fluorescence focus on spectrally distinguishable emission bands or colors and different intensity levels as fluorescence codes. The fluorescence parameter lifetime has been, however, barely exploited. In this work the goal is to perform multiplexing with encoding fluorophores with different fluorescence lifetimes (LTs). In comparison to the spectral multiplexing strategies this has the advantage, that the different fluorescence LT codes can be measured with the excitation and emission wavelength, thus reducing instrument costs. Moreover, LTs should not depend on emitter concentration. Unlike organic dyes, the LTs of which are typically < 10 ns, the fluorescence LTs of ternary semiconductor QDs that represent a “green” alternative to conventional Cd-containing QDs are in the range of several hundred ns, independent of oxygen concentration, and can be tuned to a certain extent by chemical composition and surface chemistry. This present a time region that can be barely covered by other emitters that have either much shorter or longer lifetimes. In this project, different encoding strategies will be assessed and the encoded particles will be then used for fluorescence assays for the analysis of several targets in parallel. Therefor the encoded particles will be functionalized with different target-specific bioligands and read out with a specifically designed flow cytometer enabling time-resolved fluorescence detection. With this instrument, the particles will be discriminated by their fluorescence LTs In one detection channel while the analytes will be quantified by fluorescence labels in a second channel in the intensity domain.
Multiplexed encoding schemes of nano- and micrometer sized polymer particles with fluorescent dyes or quantum dots (QDs) and their optical detection, are of increasing interest for applications in the life sciences, for example in flow cytometry. Almost all strategies utilizing fluorescence focus on spectrally distinguishable emission bands or colors and different intensity levels as fluorescence codes.
In this work the goal is to perform multiplexing with encoding fluorophores with different fluorescence lifetimes (LTs). In comparison to the spectral multiplexing strategies this has the advantage, that the different fluorescence LT codes can be measured with the same excitation and emission wavelength, thus reducing instrumental costs. Moreover, LTs should not depend on emitter concentration. Unlike organic dyes, the LTs of which are typically <10ns, the fluorescence LTs of ternary semiconductor QDs which represent a “green” alternative to conventional Cd-containing QDs are in the range of several hundred ns, independent of oxygen concentration, and can be tuned to a certain extent by chemical composition and surface chemistry. This presents a time region that can barely be covered by other emitters that have either much shorter or longer lifetimes. In this project, different encoding strategies will be assessed, and the encoded particles will then be used for fluorescence assays for the analysis of several targets in parallel. Therefore, the encoded particles will be functionalized with different target-specific bioligands and read out with a specifically designed flow cytometer enabling time-resolved fluorescence detection. With this instrument, the particles will be discriminated by their fluorescence LTs in one detection channel while the analytes will be quantified by fluorescence labels in a second channel in the intensity domain.
Spectral encoding of cells or particles and the discrimination of multiple spectral codes are a critical process in flow cytometry (FCM). Typical issues in spectral encoding are, e.g., the spectral overlap of codes, or the increasing complexity of instruments . The exploitation of the photoluminescence lifetime (LT) as an encoding parameter could be used to circumvent both of these issues, as it adds another dimension to the parameter space, or, when used as a stand-alone parameter, requiring only one excitation light source and one detector. While LT encoding was considered already decades ago it is still not implemented as a routine technique in FCM yet, mainly due to the challenge of very few photons being available within the limited transition time of a cell or particle through the laser spot.
Recently, we demonstrated LT-FCM based on luminophores with ns LTs in a compact and low-cost flow cytometer. Measurements on polymer microbeads containing luminophores with distinctly different excited state LTs enabled the complete discrimination of three LT codes and five codes in total could be identified.
Now, we have extended our approach towards considerably longer LTs by custom-made polymer microbeads loaded with different ratios of InP/ZnS and AgInS2 quantum dots. The use of these materials significantly expands the usable time range for LT encoding to up to several hundred ns. Our studies demonstrate the possibility to further increase the number of viable LT codes for multiplexing in LT-FCM without the need for extensive hardware modifications.
Bioanalytical, diagnostic, and security applications require the fast and sensitive determination of a steadily increasing number of analytes or events in parallel in a broad variety of detection formats.[1,2] Ideal candidates for spectral encoding and multiplexing schemes are luminescent nanocrystals like semiconductor quantum dots (QDs), particularly Cd-containing II/VI QDs with their narrow and symmetric emission bands. With the availability of relatively simple and inexpensive instrumentation for time-resolved fluorescence measurements, similar strategies utilizing the compound-specific parameter fluorescence lifetime or fluorescence decay kinetics become increasingly attractive.[3-5] The potential of different types of QDs like II/VI, III/V and Cd-free ternary QDs such as AgInS (AIS) QDs for lifetime-based encoding and multiplexing has been, however, barely utilized, although the lifetimes of these nanocrystals cover a time windows which is barely accessible with other fluorophores. Here we present a brief insight into the photophysics of AIS QDs and show the potential of dye- and QD-encoded beads for lifetime-based encoding and detection schemes in conjunction with flow cytometry and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy
Time-resolved flow cytometry
(2019)
The fast identification of a large number of analytes or events is increasingly required in bioanalytical, diagnostic, and security applications. The versatility and straightforward use make multiparametric fluorescence techniques particularly interesting as detection techniques. An established method for high-throughput single-cell and single-particle measurements is flow cytometry (FCM). Using only spectral encoding without further intensity information, state-of-the-art instruments equipped with several light sources and detectors can resolve almost 20 different color codes. However, this is not sufficient to answer complex research questions, e.g. in cell biology and immunology. In contrast, routine applications demand low-cost and sometimes even portable instruments and thus a minimum number of instrument components. Thus, there are currently two main research directions in FCM: the development of methods that can either address increasingly complex analytical challenges or provide low-cost and robust approaches for routine multiplex analyses. Common spectral multiplexing approaches face limitations in both directions. On the one hand, spectral overlap of labels restricts the number of codes and makes elaborate correction schemes necessary. On the other hand, even for lower degrees of multiplexing often a sophisticated optical setup is needed. An alternative to spectral multiplexing and intensity encoding is to exploit the luminescence lifetime (LT) as an encoding parameter. This can allow for extending the parameter space in combination with spectral encoding or result in more simple and compact devices due to fewer optical components. The availability of fast electronics enables miniaturized and portable lifetime measurement setups at relatively low cost. LT-FCM requires to master LT determination with a limited number of detected photons due to the short interaction time of the encoded objects with the laser spot. In this study, we address this issue for time-domain cytometry and present a novel lifetime flow cytometry (LT-FCM) platform based on a compact setup and straightforward time-domain measurements utilizing LT-encoded luminescent beads. Moreover, we present the realization of a first bioanalytical assay with LT-encoded beads.