Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of degranulation response to C48/80 in mast cells

Abstract

Mast cell (MCs) researches have received worldwide attention and achieved great achievements. Degranulation of MCs is not only related to anaphylaxis, but also plays an important role in the formation and progression of tumor. The existing detection methods could not fully reflect the degree of cell degranulation. In this paper, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was used to detect and analyze the degranulation degree of MCs treated with different concentrations of C48/80 (compound 48/80, a mast cell activator). The culture supernatants of cells treated with different concentrations of C48/80 (0 μg/mL, 2 μg/mL and 10 μg/mL) were mixed with Ag colloids and high quality SERS spectra were acquired. The assignment of SERS bands combined with differential spectra analysis indicated that biomolecules associated with cell degranulation in the C48/80 treated groups were changed compared with the control group, including a decrease in the percentage of lipid content and an increase in the relative contents of collegen and phosphatidylserine. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) diagnostic algorithms were employed to analyze and distinguish the SERS spectra of different cell degranulation groups with high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. The larger value of the integration area under the ROC curve also suggested the greater forecast accuracy. This exploratory work demonstrates that the combination of SERS technology and PCA-LDA algorithm has great potential for developing a label-free, comprehensive and accurate method for detecting cell degranulation.