Visual Biopsy by Hydrogen Peroxide-Induced Signal Amplification

Visual biopsy has attracted special interest by surgeons due to its simplicity and practicality; however, the limited sensitivity of the technology makes it difficult to achieve an early diagnosis. To circumvent this problem, herein, we report a visual signal amplification strategy for establishing a marker-recognizable biopsy that enables early cancer diagnosis. In our proposed approach, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was selected as a potential underlying marker for its compact relationship in cancer progression. For selective recognition of H2O2 in the process of visual biopsy, a benzylbenzeneboronic acid pinacol ester-decorated copolymer, namely, PMPC-Bpe, was synthesized, affording the final formation of the H2O2-responsive micelles in which amylose was trapped. The presence of H2O2 activates the boronate ester recognition site and induces it releasing abundant indicator amylose, leading to signal amplification. The indicator came across the solution of KI/I-2 added to the sample, and the formative amylose-KI/I-2 complex has a distinct blue color at 574 nm for visual amplification detection. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated by visualizing the H2O2 content of cancer at different stages and three kinds of actual cancerous samples. As far as we know, this is the first paradigm to rationally design a signaling amplification-based molecular recognizable biopsy for visual and sensitive disease identification, which will extend new possibilities for marker-recognition and signal amplification-based biopsy in disease progressing.