The α-fetoprotein (AFP)-producing gastric cancer (AFP-GC) is a rare subtype of gastric cancer, which presents stronger invasiveness, higher malignancy and poor prognosis compared with common gastric cancer. So developing sensitive and specific biomarker detection strategy is vital for accurate diagnosis and treating of the disease. Herein, a photoelectrochemical (PEC) AND logic gate strategy was proposed for highly sensitive detection of dual-biomarkers employing catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) as signal amplification tactic. AFP and microRNA-122 (miRNA-122), as biomarkers for AFP-GC identification, are adopted as input of logic gate operation, and the released trigger DNA strands initiate CHA to achieve the exciton-plasma coupling between CdTe QDs and AuNPs, thus leading to an increase in photocurrent. The output PEC signals present a linear correlation with the logarithm of the input target concentration with a detection limit of 6.22 pg/mL for AFP and 4 fM for miRNA-122, respectively. This work offers a straightforward and efficient method for logic gate operation and high sensitive and specific detection of dual-biomarkers for identification of the subtype of gastric cancer.
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