Stochastic Sensors for the Enantioselective Determination of Serine in Blood for the Early Diagnosis of Breast Cancer

Abstract

Proteomics and metabolomics lately have provided new biomarkers for early diagnosis of cancer, e.g., enantiomers of amino acids. Therefore, this paper proposes an enantioselective stochastic sensor based on physical immobilization of Zn(II)-5(4-carboxyphenyl)-10,15,20-tris(4 phenoxyphenyl)porphyrine in a nanographene paste for enantioanalysis of serine in biological samples. Different signatures were recorded for L- and D-serine proving that the proposed stochastic sensor is enantioselective. Also, the linear concentration ranges of the proposed sensor covered a wide range of concentration from 1 mmol L⁻¹ to 1 pmol L⁻¹ for L-serine and up to 100 fmol L⁻¹ for D-serine, allowing their assay in healthy people as well as in patients with breast cancer. The recovery tests performed showed a high recovery of the enantiomers of serine (higher than 99.00%) with relative standard deviations lower than 1.00%. The results of the enantioanalysis showed that enantioanalysis of serine may contribute to the early diagnosis of breast cancer by the quantification of D-serine.

Keywords:

• Serine
• enantioanalysis
• stochastic sensor
• nanographene
• Zn(II)-5(4-carboxyphenyl)-10,15,20-tris(4 phenoxyphenyl)porphyrine
• breast cancer

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020-0059, within PNCDI III.