Pattern Recognition of Cells via Multiplexed Imaging with Monosaccharide-Imprinted Quantum Dots.

Recognition of cancer cells is essential for many important areas such as targeted cancer therapy. Multi-monosaccharide-based recognition could be a useful strategy to improve the recognition specificity, but such a possibility has not been explored yet. Herein we report pattern recognition of cells via multiplexed imaging with monosaccharide-imprinted quantum dots (QDs). Imprinted with sialic acid, fucose, and mannose as the template, respectively, the QDs exhibited good specificity toward the template monosaccharides. Multiplexed imaging of cells simultaneously stained with these monosaccharide-imprinted QDs revealed the relative expression levels of the monosaccharides on the cells. Pattern recognition constructed using the intensities of multiplexed imaging unveiled the similarities and differences of different cell lines, allowing for the recognition of not only cancer cells from normal cells but also cancer cells of different cell lines. Thus, this study paved a solid ground for the design and preparation of novel cancer-cell targeting reagents and nanoprobes.