A new NanoCarb paper – “The polymeric glyco-linker controls the signal outputs for plasmonic gold nanorods biosensors due to biocorona formation” by Alessia Pancaro (ESR 11) at VITO, in collaboration with Panagiotis Georgiou (ESR 3) at the University of Warwick – has been published on the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Nanoscale.
This manuscript demonstrates how the nature of polymeric tethers, used to anchor glycans to gold nanorods, directs the formation of biocoronas in serum, and the impact this has on biosensing of lectins.
The fundamental changes in gold nanorod optical response dependent on the surface coating and measurement medium, further demonstrate that trials carried out in buffer are not necessarily adequate for identification of ligand candidates for plasmonic biosensors intended for use in complex biological samples.
It also shows that preventing all biocorona formation, which is incredibly challenging, on plasmonic nanoparticle sensors may not be essential, so long as the corona which does form is reversible and the underlying targeting ligands remain exposed.
Finally, this work clearly shows that the polymer coating, not just the targeting ligand, plays a critical role in tuning the biosensing outputs and that the coating must be tuned for each application area.
It is available Open Access on the Journal’s website.