Tumor cell pH detection based on CdSe quantum dots’ fluorescence charateristics

The incidence of cancers has increased year by year and the early diagnosis for cancer is important to prevent cancers. Due to abnormal metabolism of tumor cells, the acidification of extracellular environment is an important feature for cancer cells. To achieve efficient and accurate pH measurement, this paper proposes a new detection method based on the fluorescence characteristics of CdSe quantum dots detection, which uses CdSe QDs with unique optical properties as sensitive substances for pH detection. PBS buffer (0.2 mol/L) with different pH has been used to simulate cell metabolites at different pH values and use 365 nm laser source to excite mixture liquid. The emitted light was detected by a fluorescence detection device. A mathematical model between fluorescence intensity and pH was finally obtained. The experimental results show the method show better effectiveness than other pH detection methods and has a high resolution of 0.037 within a pH range of 6.1–7.8 and a measurement resolution of 0.037 pH units. This method has high temperature stability and short testing time, which shows high potential for pH detection. This method has its superiority in all the testing methods. It exhibits a new way of generalizing to pH detection.