Design of innovative and low-cost dopamine-biotin conjugate sensor for the efficient detection of protein and cancer cells Notarbartolo, Monica Alfieri, Maria Laura Avolio, Roberto Ball, Vincent Errico, Maria Emanuela Massaro, Marina Puglisi, Roberta Sánchez Espejo, Rita María Viseras Iborra, César Antonio Riela, Serena Dopamine Biotin Dip-coating Low-cost sensor The rapid, precise identification and quantification of specific biomarkers, toxins, or pathogens is currently a key strategy for achieving more efficient diagnoses. Herein a dopamine-biotin monomer was synthetized and oxidized in the presence of hexamethylenediamine, to obtain adhesive coatings based on polydopamine-biotin (PDA-BT) on different materials to be used in targeted molecular therapy. Insight into the structure of the PDA-BT coating was obtained by solid-state 13C NMR spectroscopy acquired, for the first time, directly onto the coating, deposited on alumina spheres. The receptor binding capacity of the PDA-BT coating toward 4-hydroxyazobenzene-2-carboxylic acid/Avidin complex was verified by means of UV–vis spectroscopy. Different deposition cycles of avidin onto the PDA-BT coating by layer-by-layer assembly showed that the film retains its receptor binding capacity for at least eight consecutive cycles. Finally, the feasibility of PDA-BT coating to recognize cell lines with different grade of overexpression of biotin receptors (BR) was investigated by tumor cell capture experiments by using MCF-7 (BR+) and HL-60 (BR−) cell lines. The results show that the developed system can selectively capture MCF-7 cells indicating that it could represent a first approach for the development of future more sophisticated biosensors easily accessible, low cost and recyclable with the dual and rapid detection of both proteins and cells. 2024-10-10T10:29:50Z 2024-10-10T10:29:50Z 2024-09-21 journal article Notarbartolo, M. et. al. 6 78 (2025) 766–775. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2024.09.145] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/95794 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.09.145 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier