Ultrasensitive and accurate diagnosis of urothelial cancer by plasmonic AuNRs-enhanced fluorescence of near-infrared Ag 2 S quantum dots

Urothelial carcinoma (UC) is a common malignant tumor in the urinary system with high recurrence rate and low survival rate 5 years after surgery. At present, imaging examination and other diagnostic methods have some shortcomings such as invasiveness and non-specificity. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a simple, rapid, noninvasive, highly sensitive and highly specific strategy to diagnose UC. Herein, a high-performance fluorescence sensor was constructed by the plasmonic gold nanorods (AuNRs)-enhanced near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence of silver sulfide quantum dots (Ag 2 S QDs). The designed sensor can be used for the fast and accurate detection of small molecule single-transmembrane protein (FXYD3), which is overexpressed in 90% of ureteral cancers and 84% of high-grade bladder cancers. Due to its high specificity, the NIR fluorescence sensor achieves the detection of FXYD3 in the range of 0.25–150 ng·ml −1 with a detection limit of 0.2 ng·ml −1 . Importantly, it also can be used for accurate diagnosis of FXYD3 in the urine of patients with relevant cancers, and the results are consistent with clinical cystoscopy and pathological analysis. The proposed fluorescence sensor provides a simple, ultrasensitive, reliable method for UC screening, tumor-grade classification and postoperative monitoring and will have great potential for clinical applications. Graphical abstract