Bioinspired nano-plate-coral platform enabled efficient detection of circulating tumor cells via the synergistic capture of multivalent aptamer and tumor cell membrane

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) offer rich information for early disease diagnosis and therapy evaluation. However, the limited sensitivity, binding affinity, and stability of current monovalent recognition-based CTCs detection techniques remain a challenge for extending their applications. Inspired by the highly efficient predation manner of plate corals, we firstly introduce an efficient and sensitive biomimetic CTCs recognition platform based on the conjugation of multivalent aptamer onto tumor cell membrane-coated magnetic graphene oxide to form a plate coral-like CTCs capture nanoprobe (MNPA-TCMMGO). In this method, the tumor cell membrane was employed to provide a biomimetic homologous fluidic interface for targeting homologous tumor cells. At the same time, multivalent aptamers were used as capture probes, which greatly enhanced the binding affinity and association probability between aptamer and target cells via cooperative multivalent effect. The unique features (robustness, high binding affinity and specificity, and biocompatibility) of MNPA-TCMMGO allow efficient, sensitive, and specific capture of rare tumor cells from biological samples. More importantly, the captured cells could maintain good viability, which is crucial for downstream analysis. Therefore, our developed biomimetic approach offers a new way to address the limitations of current CTCs detection methods and presents considerable potential for clinical cancer diagnostics.