A highly sensitive aptasensor for the detection of prostate specific antigen based on dumbbell hybridization chain reaction

Accurate and sensitive monitoring of disease biomarkers is of remarkable significance for early clinical diagnosis. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is regarded as a promising tumor biomarker secreted from the prostate epithelial cells. In this study, a highly sensitive electrochemical biosensor for PSA is proposed with split aptamer based recognition and dumbbell hybridization chain reaction (DHCR) mediated signal amplification. The form of DHCR provides great prospect of DNA self-assembly at solid interface with better performances than traditional HCR. Under optimal conditions, the limit of detection for the analysis of PSA is estimated to be 0.5 pg mL-1. In addition, this method performs satisfactorily in clinical serum samples and affords the advantages of high selectivity, stability, as well as good reproducibility. Therefore, it possesses great application potential in the field of clinical diagnosis.