Synergy represents a natural approach for high-efficiency recognition in biological systems. Inspired by the recognition mechanism of viral infection of mammalian cells, here we develop heterovalency magnetic DNA nanoclaws with octopus arms morphology for synergetic cell capture. We demonstrated that the rigid-flexible DNA nanoclaws can load multiple antibodies (Abs) targeting different epitopes for enhanced capture of cancer cells, especially significantly increasing the capture efficiency of MDA-MB-231 cells up to 82.3 ± 7.1%. We also employed DNA nanoclaws with the combined use of multiple Abs to capture circulating tumor cells from clinical samples with high efficiency and specificity. We expect that the DNA nanoclaws not only could play a key role in liquid biopsy, but also could be expanded, with more applications benefiting from their modularity and programmability to modify various functionalities in future.
Keywords: DNA nanostructure; circulating tumor cell capture; rolling circle amplification; synergy effect; viral infection mechanism-inspired strategy.