Detection of membrane receptors on per tumor cell by nonimmobilized cell capillary electrophoresis and a mathematic model

Abstract

Folate receptors (FRs) are a class of valuable therapeutic target which is highly expressed on a variety of cancers. The accurate detection of the expression of FRs in different cells is conducive to improve the accuracy of FR targeted tumor therapy. Herein, a method based on nonimmobilized cell capillary electrophoresis (NICCE) combined with a mathematic model to quantify FRs on each single tumor cell was developed. At first, we studied the interactions between FA and A549, HT-29, HepG2, and U87MG cells by NICCE respectively, and calculated the kinetic parameters (Ka, k’, ka, and kd). Next, we established a mathematic model to accurately determine the number of moles of FRs on per A549, HT-29, HepG2, and U87MG cell for the first time, that were (10.44 ± 0.53) × 10–19 mol, (34.32 ± 1.33) × 10–19 mol, (337.14 ± 10.11) × 10–19 mol, and (37.31 ± 2.13) × 10–19 mol. Then, these re-sults were proved to be consistent with the results of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Therefore, this method is simple, rapid, sensitive, and without protein separation or purification, which is expected to achieve clinical detection of cell membrane receptor expression level of cell membrane receptors on a single cell, which may be greatly beneficial to further clinical diagnosis and therapy.