Universal Artificial Urinary Biomarker Probe Enabled by an Aptamer-DNAzyme-Nanozyme Construct

Artificial urinary biomarker probes (AUBPs) have recently emerged as a new class of diagnostic tools. However, they are applicable only to the biomarkers with catalytic activities or high reactivities. Here, we present a general modular design of AUBPs, integrating an aptamer for target recognition, DNAzyme for triggerable signal transduction, and nanozyme as a urinary artificial biomarker. For proof-of-concept demonstration, we developed an AUBP that is specifically and sensitively responsive to circulating an amyloid-β oligomer (AβO). After the nanoprobe was injected into circulation, colorimetric urinalysis was conducted to infer the circulating level of AβO for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This approach can unambiguously distinguish AD mice from healthy ones, achieving a low detection limit of ∼2.8 pg/mL. It is ∼67 times more sensitive than the conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, owing to the cascaded signal amplification enabled by DNAzyme activity, enrichment by renal filtration, and chromogenic reaction catalyzed by nanozyme.