Sensitive detection of prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) in urine based upon CRISPR/Cas12a and gold nanorods (AuNRs).

Prostate Cancer Antigen 3, a type of long non-coding RNA, exhibits outstanding specificity as a biomarker for the diagnosis of prostate cancer, offering a highly effective diagnostic indicator, whereas the currently used prostate specific antigen exhibits low specificity, leading to reduced accuracy in prostate cancer diagnosis. Herein, we designed a novel fluorescent sensing platform for targeted detection of PCA3, which integrates the non-specific trans-cleavage activity of the CRISPR/Cas12a with the remarkable fluorescence quenching effect of Gold Nanorods. The Cas12a recognizes and binds to specific sequences of PCA3, thereby activating nonspecific cleavage activity, which cleaves fluorescent reporter probes adsorbed on AuNRs, thus leading to the recovery of fluorescence signals and enabling sensitive detection. The proposed fluorescent sensor exhibits excellent accuracy and convenience for the detection of PCA3 in urine, and a detection limit as low as 1.65 pM was obtained. This sensing system has achieved effective detection of clinical samples of prostate cancer and is expected to provide significant assistance in the screening and therapeutic feedback of prostate cancer in clinical diagnosis.