Mixed-Dimensional Heterostructure Material-Based SERS for Trace Level Identification of Breast Cancer-Derived Exosomes

Avijit Pramanik; Justin Mayer; Shamily Patibandla; Kaelin Gates; Ye Gao; Dalephine Davis; Ram Seshadri; Paresh Chandra Ray

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c01441

Mixed-Dimensional Heterostructure Material-Based SERS for Trace Level Identification of Breast Cancer-Derived Exosomes

ACS Omega. 2020 Jul 1;5(27):16602-16611. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c01441. eCollection 2020 Jul 14.

Authors

Avijit Pramanik¹, Justin Mayer², Shamily Patibandla¹, Kaelin Gates¹, Ye Gao¹, Dalephine Davis¹, Ram Seshadri², Paresh Chandra Ray¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi 39217, United States.
² Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-5121, United States.

Abstract

Raman spectroscopy has capability for fingerprint molecular identification with high sensitivity if weak Raman scattering signal can be enhanced by several orders of magnitudes. Herein, we report a heterostructure-based surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) platform using 2D graphene oxide (GO) and 0D plasmonic gold nanostar (GNS), with capability of Raman enhancement factor (EF) in the range of ∼10¹⁰ via light-matter and matter-matter interactions. The current manuscript reveals huge Raman enhancement for heterostructure materials occurring via both electromagnetic enhancement mechanism though plasmonic GNS nanoparticle (EF ∼10⁷) and chemical enhancement mechanism through 2D-GO material (EF ∼10²). Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation data and experimental investigation indicate that GNS allows light to be concentrated into nanoscale "hotspots" formed on the heterostructure surface, which significantly enhanced Raman efficiency via a plasmon-exciton light coupling process. Notably, we have shown that mixed-dimensional heterostructure-based SERS can be used for tracking of cancer-derived exosomes from triple-negative breast cancer and HER2(+) breast cancer with a limit of detection (LOD) of 3.8 × 10² exosomes/mL for TNBC-derived exosomes and 4.4 × 10² exosomes/mL for HER2(+) breast cancer-derived exosomes.