Ultrasensitive electrogenerated chemiluminescent DNA-based biosensing switch for the determination of bleomycin

An ultrasensitive electrogenerated chemiluminescent (ECL) DNA-based biosensing switch for the determination of bleomycin (BLM) was developed based on Fe(II) ·BLM-mediated hairpin DNA strand cleavage and a structure-switching ECL-dequenching mechanism. A thiolated ss-DNA was used as a substrate for BLMs: one terminus was tethered onto an electrode surface, and the other terminus was labelled with the ECL quencher ferrocene to form a hairpin structure. This thiolated ss-DNA self-assembled on to the tris(2,2′-bipyridine)ruthenium-gold nanoparticle composite modified gold electrode. In the presence of Fe(II) ·BLM, the ECL DNA biosensing switch undergoes an irreversible cleavage event that can trigger a significant increase in ECL intensity. The relationship of ECL intensity and the concentration of BLMs was found to be linear in the range of 5 fM – 5000 fM with a detection limit of 2 fM. This work demonstrates that the design of a highly sensitive ECL DNA-based biosensing switch that uses the sequence selectivity of DNA cleavage mediated by the antitumor drug BLM in combination with a chemical quencher, such as ferrocene, to quench ECL signal(s), offers a promising approach for the determination of ultratrace amounts of antitumor drugs.

► A novel ECL DNA-based biosensing switch for bleomycin was developed.
► The biosensing switch can achieve extremely high sensitivity.
► A promising strategy for the determination of antitumor drugs was provided.
► The biosensing switch is based on Fe(II) ·BLM-mediated hairpin DNA strand cleavage.