Development of a method to diagnose endometrial cancer based on the AuNRs-AntiVimentin optical probe

Abstract

Endometrial cancer is one of the common gynecological malignancies, and its incidence has been increasing year by year in recent years, raising higher requirements for its rapid diagnosis. In this article, gold nanorods (AuNRs) with localized surface plasmon resonance properties (LSPR) has used to prepare AuNRs-antibody to waveform protein (AuNRs-AntiVimentin) optical probes, and a new method has been constructed that could rapidly detect and identify endometrial cancer tissue sections by polarized light microscopy. AuNRs were prepared by seed growth method using gold chloride as raw material, and the morphology of AuNRs and the optical characteristics of AuNRs-AntiVimentin has characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), and zeta potential; immunohistochemistry (IHC) and AuNRs-AntiVimentin optical probes have used to detect clinical endometrial cancer, respectively. The AuNRs-AntiVimentin optical probe has been used to detect endometrial cancer tissue sections and found to have good bio-specificity, with no significant difference in the detection of AuNRs-AntiVimentin compared with conventional IHC techniques (p > .05). An optical probe generated by coupling AuNRs with Vimentin antibodies has been obtained to detect and identify endometrial cancer with simple operation and comparable effect to conventional IHC, providing a new method and idea for the rapid detection of endometrial cancer.

Keywords: endometrial cancer; gold nanorods (AuNRs); optical probe; polarization characteristic; rapid detection.