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. 2021 Apr 2;93(14):5862–5871. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c00188

Figure 3.

Figure 3

ERα-AuNPs showed a greater targeting effect and specificity for MCF-7 spheroids than HER2-AuNPs. MCF-7 spheroids incubated with the ERα + HER2-AuNP mixture (60 pM, 2 h) in microfluidic devices. The false color images correspond to the SERS signal from (A) ERα-AuNPs and (B) HER2-AuNPs within the same spheroid. The minimum and maximum look up table (LUT) thresholds were set to exclude any poorly correlating or noisy spectra (minimum = 0.6). (C) Reference spectra of ERα-AuNPs (BPE Raman reporter) (red) and (D) HER2-AuNPs (PPY Raman reporter) (purple) in H2O. The spectrum was collected using 100% laser power with 0.05 s accumulation time. The inset (dashed box) shows SERS intensity at 1635 cm–1 (red) that was selected as the representative peak for ERα-AuNPs (BPE Raman reporter) and SERS intensity at 955 cm–1 (red) that was selected as the representative peak for HER2-AuNPs (PPY Raman reporter). (E) Average Raman intensities at 1635 (ERα-AuNPs) and 955 cm–1 (HER2-AuNPs). The average of three samples from three independent biological replicates is shown. Error bars presented as mean ± S.D. * Significant difference (p < 0.05) in Student’s t test.