A novel flower-shaped Ag@ZIF-67 chemiluminescence sensor for sensitive detection of CEA.

In this work, a chemiluminescence (CL) aptasensor for sensitive carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) detection was constructed based on the CL system of luminol-HO-NaOH. Magnetic carbon nanotubes (MCNTs), as the base material, was modified with CEA-aptamer and DNA1, and was combined with the novel flower-shaped Ag@ZIF-67 of modified with DNA2 through the principle of base complementary pairing. CEA combined with aptamer when it existed in the solution. At the same time, MCNTs was adsorbed at the bottom of the container under the influence of external magnetic field, and Ag@ZIF-67 enhanced the CL signal. The CL aptasensor demonstrated high selectivity and sensitivity for CEA in human serum sample with (1-4): a detection limit of 4.53 × 10 ng/mL in case the detection range was 0.05-500 ng/mL. Furthermore, the proposed method had been shown great potential in cancer diagnosis.