Protein-templated copper nanoclusters for fluorimetric determination of human serum albumin.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Lettieri, Mariagrazia Palladino, Pasquale Scarano, Simona Minunni, Maria
Abstract	Graphical abstractCopper nanoclusters (CuNCs) are attractive for their unique optical properties, providing sensitive fluorescent detection of several kinds of targets even in complex matrices. Their ability in growing on suitable protein and nucleic acid templates make CuNCs efficient optical reporters to be exploited in bioanalysis. In this work, we report the specific and sensitive determination of human serum albumin (HSA) in human serum (HS) and urine via CuNCs fluorescence. HSA is the most abundant protein in plasma, and plays a key role in the early diagnosis of serious pathological conditions such as albuminuria and albuminemia. Recently, HSA has become clinically central also as a biomarker to assess severity, progression, and prognosis of various cancers. We report the controlled and reproducible growth of CuNCs directly on the target analyte, HSA, which results in a fine dose-dependent fluorescent emission at 405 nm. The protocol is optimized in water, and then applied to serum and urine specimens, without matrix pretreatment. The method linearly responds within the whole concentration of clinical interest, with a sensitivity of 1.8 ± 0.1 × 10−3 g L−1 and 0.62 ± 0.03 × 10−3 g L−1 in serum and urine, respectively, and excellent reproducibility (CVav% ca. 3% for both). The assay is designed to have a single protocol working for both matrices, with recovery of 95% (HS) and 96% (urine). The stability of the fluorescence after CuNCs formation was tested over 3 days, displaying good results (yet higher in urine than in serum).Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00604-021-04764-7.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7940276&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	00263672
Journal	Mikrochimica Acta [Mikrochim Acta]
Volume Number	188
DOI	10.1007/s00604-021-04764-7
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7940276
Issue Number	4
PubMed reference number	33686548
e-ISSN	14365073
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Vienna
Publisher Date	2021-03-08
Publisher Place	Vienna
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2021
Subject Keyword	Copper nanoclusters Human serum albumin Fluorescence Label-free assay
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Analytical Chemistry