Recently, a research team led by Professor WANG Hongzhi from the Institute of Health and Medical Technology, the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed a bioselective surface-enhanced Raman scattering chip, the BioGate Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Chip, for rapid identification of malignant breast cancer margins during surgery.
The study was published in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology.
Accurately determining whether all tumor tissue has been removed during breast cancer surgery is critical for reducing recurrence and avoiding reoperation. Currently, intraoperative frozen-section pathology is the main method used for margin assessment, but it is time-consuming and highly dependent on pathological expertise, making rapid molecular-level evaluation difficult.
In this study, the team designed the BioGate SERS Chip using a layered gold nanoparticle structure that formed "bioselective nanochannels." These channels allowed low-molecular-weight metabolites to enter plasmonic hotspot regions while blocking larger interfering molecules such as proteins and DNA. This design improved signal stability and reduced background interference in complex tissue samples.
The chip demonstrated extremely high sensitivity, detecting molecular probes at concentrations as low as 10-13 M and identifying malignant signals in samples containing only 1% tumor cells. In breast cancer mouse models and intraoperative tissue samples from 50 breast cancer patients, the platform rapidly distinguished malignant tissues from benign tissues based on characteristic Raman signals. It also showed stable performance across major molecular subtypes of breast cancer, including HER2-positive, triple-negative, and hormone receptor-positive cancers.
"The new nanobiosensing strategy is based on what we call 'bioselective hotspot gating,'" said Prof. WANG, "Instead of relying only on traditional morphology-based analysis, it allows surgical margin assessment to directly detect metabolite molecular fingerprints."
The technology is expected to support breast-conserving surgery and precision tumor resection, and may in the future be integrated with portable Raman devices and artificial intelligence systems for rapid molecular pathological diagnosis.
Schematic illustration of the BioGate SERS Chip for rapid intraoperative detection of breast cancer surgical margins. (Image by HUANG Guangyao)
