Since catecholamine (CA) including dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE) and epinephrine (EP), works as a kind of important acupuncture substances and plays a significant physiological role in central nervous system, it is of great importance to develop an ultrasensitive and accurate method to detect CA levels in biological fluids, which could improve the living quality of patients and lower the treatment cost.

The study team led by Prof. YANG Liangbao from Institute of Intelligent Machines(IIM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese academy of science, developed a surface-enhanced resonance Raman scattering (SERRS) platform to realize selective detection of catecholamine in serum. The article was published in Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical （2018, 268, 350-358.）(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925400518308220?via%3Dihub).

The team developed a functionalized substrate with Fe-NTA label modified on the PVP stabilized Au NPs.

The functionalized substrate with SERRS sensor (Fe-NTA) realized rapid, sensitive and selective detection of CA molecules in the serum.

Moreover, three CA molecules spiked into serum sample can also be determined and distinguished successfully by using SERRS technique combined with PCA.
Most importantly, by using the Au-O band from PVP stabilized Au NPs as the stable internal calibration standard, the research team realizes the quantitative measurement of CA molecules.

This work provides a new way to develop novel SERRS platform to realize repeatable, sensitive and selective detection of targets in various complex fields, such as urine and tissue fluid.

This work was supported by the National Major Scientific and Technological Special Project for “Significant New Drugs Development” (No.2018ZX09J18112), National Science Foundation of China (21505138, 21571180, 61605221), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M622031).

Schematic representation of the SERRS detection of catecholamine. (Imaged by CAO Xiaomin)