Imprinted Particles for Direct Fluorescence Detection of Sialic Acid in Polar Media and on Cancer Cells with Enhanced Control of Nonspecific Binding

Glycoproteins are abundant on the cell surface of mammals, providing structural support, modulating membrane properties, and acting as signaling agents. Variation glycosylation patterns has been found to indicate various disease states, including malignancy. Sialic acid (SA) is present a terminating group cell-surface glycans, its overexpression linked several types cancer. Detection SA therefore critical for detection cancer in early stages. In this work, fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymer layer targeting was synthesized silica-coated polystyrene (PS) particles. Compared previous works, PS core supplies lighter, lower-density support improved suspension stability scattering properties. Moreover, their smaller size provides higher surface-area-to-volume ratio binding. The incorporation monomer MIP shell allowed simple rapid determination binding specificity polar media due deprotonation–reprotonation interaction mechanism between SA, which led spectral changes. Upon titration particles with suspension, an increase fluorescence emission observed, more selectively compared nonimprinted (NIP) control staining experiments performed by flow cytometry, behavior favorably that SA-binding lectins. NIPs prepared “dummy” template served better negative assays favorable inward orientation template-binding functional groups shell, reduced nonspecific results show MIPs promising tool vitro cancerous cells future diagnosis at