Droplet electrochemical study of the pH dependent redox behavior of novel ferrocenyl-carborane...

Analytica Chimica Acta xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

G ModelACA 233625 No. of Pages 7

Droplet electrochemical study of the pH dependent redox behavior ofnovel ferrocenyl-carborane derivatives and its application in specificcancer cell recognition

Changyu Wua, Afzal Shah c, Hongde Ye b, Xiao Chen a, Jing Ye a, Hui Jiang a,Baoan Chen d, Xuemei Wang a,*, Hong Yan b,*a State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics (Chien-Shiung Wu Laboratory), Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR Chinab State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, PR ChinacDepartment of Chemistry, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, PakistandDepartment of Hematology, the Affiliated Zhongda Hospital, Clinical Medical School, Southeast University, Nanjing 210009, PR China

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

� Electrochemical behaviors of novelferrocenyl based carboranes (FcCB)were explored with a droplet system.

� The shifts of peak potentials withchanges of pH values indicated theinvolvement of proton during elec-tron transfer reaction.

� Normal cells and cancer cells couldbe specifically recognized by usingFcCB as probe.

� This electrochemical method in adroplet shows great potential appli-cation for relevant diagnostics ofclinical samples.

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:Received 5 November 2014Received in revised form 5 December 2014Accepted 9 December 2014Available online xxx

Keywords:Ferrocenyl based carboranesDroplet electrochemistryLeukemiaCancer cell recognition

A B S T R A C T

Novel ferrocenyl based carboranes (FcCBs) and their distinguish behavior for cancer cell recognition havebeen explored in this contribution. The voltammetric study in a droplet of 10 mL placed on the surface of aglassy carbon electrode demonstrates the excellent electrochemical behavior of FcCBs, which could befurther exploited for establishing the promising and sensitive biosensors. The FcCBs’ redox behavior isexamined in a wide pH range, and square wave voltammetry revealed the reversible and irreversiblenature of first and second anodic peaks. The obvious shifts in peak potentials corresponding with thechange of pH values demonstrate the abstraction of electrons to be accompanied with the transfer ofprotons. By using the droplet electrochemical technique, FcCBs can be employed to distinguish normaland cancer cells with a linear range from 1.0 � 103 to 3.0 � 104 cells mL�1 and the limit of detection at800 cells mL�1. The novel carborane derivatives could be utilized as important potential molecular probesfor specific recognition of cancer cells like leukemia cells from normal cells.

ã 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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* Corresponding authors. Tel.: +86 25 83792177; fax: +86 25 83792177.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (X. Wang), [email protected]

(H. Yan).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2014.12.0190003-2670/ã 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: C. Wu, et al., Droplet electrochemical study of the pH dependent redox behavior of novel ferrocenyl-carborane derivatives and its application in specific cancer cell recognition, Anal. Chim. Acta (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2014.12.019

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2 C. Wu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta xxx (2014) xxx–xxx


1. Introduction

Recently scientists have paid much attention to the synthesis andapplication of organometallic compounds in biomedical field due tothe success of cisplatin in chemotherapy [1–3]. Ferrocene is the firstknown prototypical metallocene and has unique structure, robust-ness, and redox property. Its numerous derivatives have beenendowed with broad range activities, such as anticancer [4–6],antimalarial [5,7], antibacterial [8], antiviral [9], anti-inflammatory[10] agents,and central nervoussystem active drugs [11]. Carboraneshave been used as a source of neutron in boron neutron capturetherapy (BCNT) for their high boron content and stability tocatabolism [12]. Carboranes have also been reported to be a potentialpharmacophore. It allows the bioisosteric replacement for phenylrings, adamantine or steroid structures as rigid scaffolding inbioactive molecules and pharmacological agents [8,13–15].

Electrochemical techniques are simple, fast, highly sensitive andpowerful tools for the determination of physicochemical param-eters, understanding redox mechanism and quantitative analysis of

Scheme 1. Chemical structures of FcCB (A) and Fc2CB (B).

Table 1Compositions of pH buffers with 0.1 M ionic strength.

pH value Composition

3.0 NaAcO–HAcO4.0 NaAcO–HAcO5.0 NaAcO–HAcO6.0 NaAcO–HAcO7.0 Na2HPO4–HCl8.0 Na2HPO4–HCl9.0 Na2HPO4–HCl

10.0 Na2HPO4–NaOH11.0 Na2HPO4–NaOH

electroactive compounds [16]. Electrochemical methods are furtherutilized as a promising diagnostic approach in clinical analysis[17,18]. Usually, electrochemical cytosensors are based on thechanges in current or resistance at cell–electrodeinterface. However,current and impedance based cytosensors are much more sensitiveto and easily affected by cell concentrations, incubation time andother environmental factors [19]. Based on these observations, wehave developed a potential based cytosensor to overcome thesedisadvantages for cell specific identification [20,21].

Droplet electrochemical technique provides more detailedinformation compared with conventional large-scale electrochem-ical systems, and only small volumes of electrolyte are required[22]. Usually, the working, reference and counter electrodes areemployed by touching onto or immersing within the droplet.Moreover, the droplet can also be placed onto the surface ofinverted working electrode while reference and counter electrodesare ahead of it [23]. The electrochemistry carried out in a droplethas achieved great success in analytical application, while the mostfamous application is in self-monitoring of blood glucose [24,25].In addition, droplet electrochemistry has also been widely used incorrosion [22], capillary detection [22,26], theoretical study[23,27] and cell analysis [28]. In our previous work, dropletelectrochemistry combined with contact angle has been employedto study biological molecules and cells [20,29].

In this study, we have designed and synthesized the electro-chemical active ferrocenyl based carboranes, abbreviated as FcCBand Fc2CB, by taking the advantages of ferrocenyl and carboranes.We have further investigated the electrochemical properties ofthese compounds in a droplet system. Meanwhile, we haveexplored the potential application of these novel ferrocenyl basedcarboranes in specific recognition of cancer cells for monitoringrelevant biological process or treatment. The results demonstratethat cancer cells like leukemia cells and normal cells could bereadily distinguished through the relevant electrochemical probe.This raises the possibility for the rapid and highly sensitive analysisof clinical samples by using electrochemistry in a droplet systemand thus monitoring the process of cancer diagnosis and therapy.

2. Experimental section

2.1. Materials and reagents

FcCB and Fc2CB (Scheme 1) were dissolved in ethanol and storedin freezer as stock solutions. All supporting electrolyte buffers(Table 1) were freshly prepared using analytical grade reagents anddeionized water from Milli-Q water purification system (Millipore,USA). The desired concentration of FcCB orFc2CB was obtained by

Please cite this article in press as: C. Wu, et al., Droplet electrochemiccarborane derivatives and its application in specific cancer cell recognition

diluting the stock solutions with buffers of known pH values.Lymphocyte separation medium (human) was purchased fromSinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) was bought from Amresco,USA. Other reagents were of analytical grade.

2.2. Isolation of leucocytes

Leucocytes were isolated from peripheral blood by using Ficoll–Hypaque gradient method [30]. Briefly, lymphocyte separationmedium was added to EDTA-anticoagulated blood diluted with anequal volume of PBS and centrifuged 15 min at 2000 rpm 20 �C. Theupper layer containing the plasma and most of the remaining cell,platelet fraction was removed. The lymphocyte cell layer waswashed with PBS twice to remove the supernatant and anyremaining platelets. The relevant study was approved by the EthicsCommittee of Southeast University, Nanjing, China and adhered tothe Declaration of Helsinki.

2.3. Equipment and measurement

All electrochemical experiments were performed in a droplet(10 mL) by utilizing CHI 660B electrochemical workstation (CHInstruments Inc., USA) with a glassy carbon electrode (K 3 mm) asthe working electrode, a platinum wire as the counter and a silverwire as a quasi-reference electrode [16,31]. CAM 200 contact angle(KSV Instrument Ltd., Finland) with video camera was applied tomonitor the droplet (Fig. 1). The UV–vis absorption spectra wererecorded on BioMate 3S UV–vis spectrophotometer (ThermoFisher Scientific Inc., USA). The pH values were adjusted by PHS-3C pH meter (Leici Corporation, China).

al study of the pH dependent redox behavior of novel ferrocenyl-, Anal. Chim. Acta (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2014.12.019


Fig. 1. Scheme of relevant droplet electrochemical system for investigation of new ferrocenyl-carborane derivative. Right corner: images of droplet electrochemical system,recorded by contact angle video camera. Working electrode was placed at the bottom; counter electrode and reference electrode were immersed into the electrolyte droplet.

C. Wu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta xxx (2014) xxx–xxx 3


Before each experiment, the surface of glassy carbon electrodewas polished with alumina powder (50 nm in diameter) followedby thoroughly rinsing with doubly distilled water. For reproducibleexperimental results, the clean glassy carbon electrode was placedin buffers and various square wave voltammograms were recordeduntil the achievement of steady state baseline voltammogram.

The experimental parameters for square wave voltammetrywere 25 Hz frequency and 4 mV potential increments correspond-ing to an effective scan rate of 100 mV s�1. Differential plusvoltammetry was performed at a scan rate of 5 mV s�1. For thepolarity of currents, cathodic currents were taken as positive [16].

The cells were re-suspended with PBS to a certain concentra-tion. FcCB solution (0.5 mL, 5 mM) was added to 10 mL cellsuspension incubated for a period of time (5, 15, 30 and 60 min)at room temperature. Then the electrochemical behaviors of themixture were investigated with differential pulse voltammetry in adroplet system. Different cell concentration (1000, 5000, 30,000,150,000 and 700,000 cell mL�1) was also investigated to evaluatethe effects of cell concentrations and to determine the limit ofdetection and linear range for cancer cells.

Fig. 2. CVs of 1.0 mM FcCB in pH 4.0 (—), 7.0 (- - -) and 10.0 (� � �) buffers at glassycarbon electrode at 100 mV s�1. Inlets show the peak potentials and currents atvarying pH.


2.4. Data processing and analysis

The differential pulse and square wave voltammograms werebaseline-fitted and subtracted by using the “Baseline Fitting andSubtraction” function in CHI 660B software. The baseline was fitted

Fig. 3. (A) The net (—), forward (- - -) and reverse (� � �) SWV of 1.0 mM FcCB in pH7.0 buffer on glassy carbon electrode at 100 mV s�1. (B) SWV of 1.0 mM FcCB in 0.1 Mphosphate buffer (pH 7.0): five scans (from a to e) on glassy carbon electrode at100 mV s�1. The inlet shows the percentage of decrease in the peak currents.





with orthogonal least squares baseline fitting algorithm and in ninefitting orders. However, the values for peak currents in all figures andtables were calculated from the original voltammograms.

Statistical analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS Statisticsversion 21. One-way ANOVA was used for significance testing andP < 0.05 is considered as statistically significant difference.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Electrochemical behavior of new ferrocenyl-carborane derivative

3.1.1. Cyclic voltammetryThe electrochemical behavior of FcCB was initially investigated

by cyclic voltammetry (CV) at a glassy carbon electrode in bufferswith different pH values (Fig. 2). Peak potentials had shifts withchanges of pH values. It indicated that proton was involved duringthe electron transfer reaction. As shown in Fig. 2, in acidicconditions of pH 4.0 (straight line in Fig. 2), the anodic peaks in theforward scan were found at Epa1 = 0.608 V and Epa2 = 0.930 V,respectively, and no cathodic peak was found in the reverse scan. Inneutral medium of pH 7.0 (dash line in Fig. 2), the oxidation peaksappeared in the forward scan at Epa1 = 0.690 V and Epa2 = 1.085 V,respectively, and a single reduction wave, 1c was registered atEpc1 = 0.544 V in the backward scan. Like the voltammetricbehavior in neutral conditions, FcCB witnessed two steps oxidationand one step reduction of the oxidation product in basic medium ofpH 10.0 (dot line in Fig. 2), but with peaks located at more positivepotentials, peak 1a at Epa1 = 0.693 V, peak 2a at Epa2 = 1.129 V, and

Fig. 4. (A) 3D plot of DPV of 1.0 mM FcCB at 100 mV s�1 vs.


the reduction peak 1c at Epc1 = 0.562 V. Peaks 1a and 1c correspondto ferrocene–ferrocenium couple of FcCB. The oxidation ferrocenylgroup in FcCB under similar conditions can be attributed to theelectron withdrawing effect of carbonyl group attached at thecyclopentadienyl ring that causes the electron removal fromferrocene difficult. The 2nd anodic peak at a high positive potentialcan be related to the oxidation of cyclopentene part of FcCB.

3.1.2. Square wave voltammetrySquare wave voltammetry (SWV) is a fast electroanalytical

technique associated with minimal chances of adsorption. Thistechnique is especially used for getting evidence about thereversible or irreversible nature of the reaction [32,33]. Thecurrent in square wave voltammetry is sampled in both positiveand negative pulses, so that oxidation and/or reduction peaks ofelectroactive species can be registered at the electrode surface inthe same experiment.

Square wave voltammograms of 1 mM FcCB recorded at pH 7.0(Fig. 3) showed results quite similar to that of CV. Two anodic peaksat 0.548 V and 1.096 V can be seen in the net current of the firstscan of SWV (solid line in Fig. 3A). The opposite direction offorward and reverse current components corresponding to peak 1a(dash and dot lines in Fig. 3A) confirmed the reversibility of theferrocenyl group. At the same time, peak 2a demonstrated theirreversible nature of cyclopentenyl oxidation.

Multiple successive scans of square wave voltammograms of1.0 mM FcCB obtained at pH 7.0 have been depicted in Fig. 3B. Nonew peak(s) appear on the successive scans, indicating the electro-

pH; plots of Epa (B) and Ipa (C) for peaks of FcCB vs. pH.



Scheme 2. Proposed oxidation mechanism of FcCB.



inactivity of oxidative products of FcCB. The inset in Fig. 3B showsgradual decrease of peak currents with consecutive scans. It wasdue to adsorption of FcCB and oxidation products at the electrodesurface. Peak currents decreased sharply in the first three scans,and almost stayed stable after the third scan. Another observationwas that the current of peak 2a decreased more quickly than peak1a. At the third scan, 50.62% and 74.11% decrease in the intensitywas noticed for peak 2a and peak 1a, respectively. This peculiarvoltammetric feature can be related to the adsorption of theoxidative products of FcCB at the electrode surface that will reducethe sensing area of the working electrode [34].

3.1.3. Differential pulse voltammetryDifferential pulse voltammetry (DPV) of FcCB was performed

for comparison of their ease of oxidation and determining thenumber of electrons involved in anodic processes. The DPV

Fig. 5. (A) The time dependence of current percentage for the FcCB after incubating with cof currents for the FcCB after incubating with different concentration of cells. The li800 cells mL�1. The inlet shows DPV of FcCB with different cell concentrations. (C) DPV of F5 min. (D) box plot of peak potentials for FcCB before and after incubating with leukem


demonstrated in Fig. S1 were obtained at pH 10.0 at 5 mV s�1. Thepotential difference at half peak height, DE1/2 corresponded to theinvolvement of 1e� in each step of FcCB. However, both anodicsignals of Fc2CB are broad and high. It was due to the possiblemerging of two sub peaks. These wide oxidation waves of Fc2CB aresuggestive of two electrons loss. The reason of this remarkablydifferent behavior from FcCB is the presence of two ferrocenylgroups in Fc2CB.

3.2. Influence of pH values and redox mechanism

The voltammetric response of FcCB was examined in support-ing electrolytes of different pH values, ranging from 3.0 to 11.0(Fig. 4). Potentials of peaks 1a and 2a increased linearly with the pHvalues of the medium (Fig. 4A and B). As shown in Fig. 4B, the plotswere fitted as Ep1a (V) = 0.05381 � pH + 0.18571 (R2 = 0.97657) andEp2a (V) = 0.5257 �pH + 0.69516 (R2 = 0. 99707). The slopes of fittinglines are near to 59 mV per pH unit at the pH interval 3.0–8.0,indicating the oxidation of FcCB to occur with the transfer of thesame number of electron and proton. However, above pH 8.0, thepotentials of peaks 1a and 2awere not influenced by the increase inpH, suggesting the oxidation to exhibit the loss of only electronswithout the involvement of protons [35]. Hence, pH 8.0 is the pKa

of FcCB at which chemical protonation–deprotonation takes place.The pH dependent redox behavior may be due to the pH sensitivefunctionality and conjugated structure of FcCB, as shown inScheme 1. The maximum peak currents of peak 1a at pH 7.0 and 2aat pH 5.0 can be attributed to the close accessibility of theircorresponding electrophores to the electrode surface under theseconditions (Fig. 4C).

ells. The inlet shows DPV of FcCB at different time with cells. (B) The logarithmic plotnear range is from 1.0 � 103 to 3.0 � 104 cells mL�1 and the limit of detection atcCB before (—) and after incubating with leukemia cells (� � �) and leucocytes (- - -) foria cells, leucocytes and HepG2 cells. *P < 0.05.





According to electrochemical behaviors and UV–vis absorp-tion spectra (see Supplementary materials Fig. S2), we proposedthese redox mechanisms of FcCB in comparison to Fc2CB. FcCBis proposed to oxidize in two 1e� and 1H+ reversible and quasi-reversible steps from the appearance of two anodic peaks withDE1/2 values corresponding to the transfer of one electron peroxidation step, ratio of forward and backward components of thetotal current, and shift of peak potential with rise in pH values(Scheme 2). The irreversibility of the 2nd step can be related tothe dimerization or adsorption of the product at the electrodesurface.

3.3. Specific recognition of cancer cells

Here we have explored a new electrochemical strategy in adroplet system to recognize cancer cells from normal cells ofclinical samples. Leukemia cells and leucocytes were taken asan example to explore the potential analytical and clinicalapplications in specific recognition of normal cells and cancercells. The limit of detection of FcCB for peak 1a was 2.32 mMand it showed nice linearity in the concentration range of 50–1000 mM (shown in Supplementary materials Fig. S3 andTable S1). The low detection limit and board linearity detectionrange of peak 1a for FcCB allowed the potential application insensitive bioanalysis of specific recognition of cancer cells(Fig. 5). The in vitro cytotoxicity was explored by using MTTassay. IC50 value of FcCB to K562 cells was about 38.2 mM asshown in Supplementary materials.

The time dependence of the efficiency of incubation time wasalso investigated (shown in Fig. 5A). The corresponding currents ofpeak 1a of FcCB were decreased with an increasing incubation time.After 5 min, peak current decreased to about 82% and then almostreached to a constant value. Therefore, the optimal incubation timewas set to 5 min for subsequent experiments. As seen from Fig. 5B,peak current values decreased logarithmically with the increasingconcentration of cancer cells (from 1.0 � 103 to 3.0 � 104 cells mL�1,that the equation was fitted as Ipa (mA) = 0.4016 � lgC (cells mL�1)� 3.65877 (R2 = 0.99867). The limit of detection of cancer cells was800 cells mL�1. Meanwhile, the peak potential was almost stable.The cell concentration was not the decisive factor of theexperiment. Besides, the cell concentration in this study wasmuch less than that in clinical samples, where there was between4500 and 11,000 white blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood[36], suggesting promising application of this strategy for therelevant clinic diagnostics.

Fig. 5C and D illustrates the electrochemical study of FcCBbefore and after incubated with different type of cells. We observedthat potential of peak 1a for normal samples negatively shifted to0.536 V and for leukemia samples positively shifted to 0.553 V. It isevident that there were significant difference of peak potentials ofFcCB after incubated with leukemia cells and leucocytes due to theresults of statistical analysis (P < 0.05, Fig. 5D). There were alsosignificant differences in peak potential of FcCB between normalcells (leucocytes) and HepG2 cells. Our previous observationsdemonstrated that the carborane derivatives had a potent selectiveinhibition effect on the proliferation of the cancer cell lines and noeffect on normal cell lines [37]. It was also observed that carboranederivatives can lead to specific binding modalities with macro-molecules, such as myoglobin [38], hemoglobin [39], nicotinamidephosphoribosyltranferase [40], low-density lipoprotein [41], rele-vant carborane ligands had been considered as effective pharma-cophores as non-BNCT anticancer agents [42–44]. Based on theseconsiderations, it is possible to readily utilize the novel carboranederivatives to target and distinguish different kinds of cells for thespecific cancer diagnostics and treatment.


4. Conclusions

The electrochemical behavior of novel ferrocenyl basedcarborane was thoroughly examined in a droplet electrochemicalsystem. Both compounds were found to have robust anodic signalsat a glassy carbon electrode. Cyclic voltammetry, square wavevoltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry were successfullyused in a wide pH range for the establishment of electrode reactionmechanism. The results revealed that ferrocenyl group gotoxidized by the abstraction of one electron and one proton in areversible manner. The oxidation was found to depend strongly onthe pH of the medium up to pH 8.0. Potential-pH plots revealedthat in strongly alkaline conditions the analytes oxidize only by theloss of electrons. Square wave voltammetry revealed the reversiblenature of the first anodic peak and quasi-reversible characteristicof the second oxidation wave. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit ofquantification (LOQ) were evaluated in order to determine thesensing ability of glassy carbon electrode for ferrocenyl carboranes.The established ferrocenyl carboranes can be utilized as sensitiveelectrochemical probes in specific recognition of normal cells andcancer cells like leukemia cells. This electrochemical bioanalysis ina droplet electrochemical system based on ferrocenyl substitutedcarboranes has a great potential application for relevant diag-nostics of clinical samples.

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation forDistinguished Young Scholars of China (81325011), National HighTechnology Research and Development Program of China(2012AA022703), National Natural Science Foundation of China(21175020,21327902 and 21271102) and the National BasicResearch Program of China(2010CB732404, 2013CB922101) aswell as Suzhou Science & Technology Major Project (ZXY2012028).Dr. Afzal Shah thanks the support of Quaid-i-Azam University andHigher Education Commission Islamabad, Pakistan.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, inthe online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2014.12.019.

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Droplet electrochemical study of the pH dependent redox behavior of novel ferrocenyl-carborane...

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