Novel Optical Biosensor Based on a Nano-Gold Coated by Schiff Base Doped in Sol/Gel Matrix for Sensitive Screening of Oncomarker CA-125

Mona N Abou-Omar; Mohamed S Attia; Hisham G Afify; Mohammed A Amin; Rabah Boukherroub; Ekram H Mohamed

doi:10.1021/acsomega.1c01974

Novel Optical Biosensor Based on a Nano-Gold Coated by Schiff Base Doped in Sol/Gel Matrix for Sensitive Screening of Oncomarker CA-125

ACS Omega. 2021 Aug 3;6(32):20812-20821. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.1c01974. eCollection 2021 Aug 17.

Authors

Mona N Abou-Omar¹, Mohamed S Attia², Hisham G Afify¹, Mohammed A Amin³, Rabah Boukherroub⁴, Ekram H Mohamed⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Women for Arts, Science and Education, Ain Shams University, Cairo 13013, Egypt.
² Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11566, Egypt.
³ Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Univ. Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille, Univ. Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, UMR 8520 - IEMN, F-59000 Lille, France.
⁵ Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, The British University in Egypt, 11837 El Sherouk City, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

The urge for sensitive, facile, minimally invasive, and fast detection method of CA-125, a significant and crucial biomarker in ovarian malignancy, is currently substantial. This paper describes the detailed construction and characterization of a newly designed optical nano-biosensor to detect CA-125 accurately and sensitively. The fabricated sensor consists of a nano-gold thin film doped into a matrix of sol-gel, exhibiting a centered fluorescence band at 423 nm when excited at 340 nm. The quantification of CA-125 relies on its quenching ability of this fluorescence signal. The sensor was challenged to evaluate its sensitivity and specificity in detecting CA-125 present in samples collected from ovarian cancer diagnosed patients and compared to samples from healthy women as a control. Our findings revealed that the developed biosensor had a sensitivity of 97.35% and a specificity of 94.29%. Additionally, a wide linearity range over 2.0-127.0 U mL^-1 for CA-125 was achieved with a detection limit of 1.45 U mL^-1. Furthermore, the sensor could successfully discriminate samples between healthy and diseased people, which demonstrates its suitability in CA-125 assessment.