Plasmonic silver nanoshells for drug and metabolite detection

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 220 - 10
• Main Authors: Huang, Lin, Wan, Jingjing, Wei, Xiang, Liu, Yu, Huang, Jingyi, Sun, Xuming, Zhang, Ru, Gurav, Deepanjali D., Vedarethinam, Vadanasundari, Li, Yan, Chen, Ruoping, Qian, Kun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09.08.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/61/320; 639/301/357/354; 639/638/11/296; 692/53/2421; Biomarkers; Blood; Brain Diseases - cerebrospinal fluid; Brain Diseases - diagnosis; Cerebrospinal fluid; Clinical Laboratory Techniques; Glucose - cerebrospinal fluid; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Infections - cerebrospinal fluid; Infections - diagnosis; Ionization; Mass spectrometry; Metabolites; multidisciplinary; Nanoparticles; Nanoshells - chemistry; Pharmaceutical Preparations - blood; Pharmaceutical Preparations - cerebrospinal fluid; Pharmacokinetics; Plasmonics; Postoperative Complications - cerebrospinal fluid; Postoperative Complications - diagnosis; Sample preparation; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Silver
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00220-4

In-vitro metabolite and drug detection rely on designed materials-based analytical platforms, which are universally used in biomedical research and clinical practice. However, metabolic analysis in bio-samples needs tedious sample preparation, due to the sample complexity and low molecular abundance. A further challenge is to construct diagnostic tools. Herein, we developed a platform using silver nanoshells. We synthesized SiO 2 @Ag with tunable shell structures by multi-cycled silver mirror reactions. Optimized nanoshells achieved direct laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry in 0.5 μL of bio-fluids. We applied these nanoshells for disease diagnosis and therapeutic evaluation. We identified patients with postoperative brain infection through daily monitoring and glucose quantitation in cerebrospinal fluid. We measured drug distribution in blood and cerebrospinal fluid systems and validated the function of blood-brain/cerebrospinal fluid-barriers for pharmacokinetics. Our work sheds light on the design of materials for advanced metabolic analysis and precision diagnostics. Preparation of samples for diagnosis can affect the detection of biomarkers and metabolites. Here, the authors use a silver nanoparticle plasmonics approach for the detection of biomarkers in patients as well as investigate the distribution of drugs in serum and cerebral spinal fluid.