jianguo hu

A novel and ultrasensitive strategy to detect protein CREPT (Cell Regulated and Expression-evaluated Protein in Tumor) in cancer cells using quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor is developed in this study. CREPT is an oncoprotein and plays vital roles in cancer initiation, growth and metastasis via mediating oncogene transcription, and the content of CREPT can reflect the degree of carcinogenesis of tissues and organs. However, there is no rapid, low-cost and ultrasensitive procedure for the quantitative detection of CREPT content in cancer tissues.

The quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor with asymmetric ring electrodes has received widespread attention for its uniform sensitivity distribution. At the same time, its 5-overtone mass sensitivity also greatly improves the fundamental frequency mass sensitivity. The 5-overtone quality (Q) factor is a technical indicator to measure the stable operation of the quartz crystal resonator with asymmetric ring electrodes in the fifth overtone mode. However, there are few papers to report the 5-overtone quality factor (Q5) of QCM sensor with asymmetric ring electrodes.