The presence of mycotoxins in herbal medicines is an established problem throughout the entire world. The sensitive and accurate analysis of mycotoxin in complicated matrices (e.g., herbs) typically involves challenging sample pretreatment procedures and an efficient detection instrument. However, although numerous reviews have been published regarding the occurrence of mycotoxins in herbal medicines, few of them provided a detailed summary of related analytical methods for mycotoxin determination. This review focuses on analytical techniques including sampling, extraction, cleanup, and detection for mycotoxin determination in herbal medicines established within the past ten years. Dedicated sections of this article address the significant developments in sample preparation, and highlight the importance of this procedure in the analytical technology. This review also summarizes conventional chromatographic techniques for mycotoxin qualification or quantitation, as well as recent studies regarding the development and application of screening assays such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, lateral flow immunoassays, aptamer-based lateral flow assays, and cytometric bead arrays. The present work provides a good insight regarding the advanced research that has been done and closes with an indication of future demand for the emerging technologies.

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is a very hazardous carcinogen, readily contaminating foodstuffs and traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) that has inspired increasing health concerns due to dietary exposure. Colloidal nanocrystals have been proposed as optical labels for aptasensor assembly, but these typically require tedious multistep conjugation and suffer from unsatisfactory robustness when used for complex matrices. In the present study, we report a rapid and sensitive method for screening for trace AFB1 levels in TCMs using a label-free fluorescent aptasensor PicoGreen dye-based strategy. Using PicoGreen to selectively measure complementary double-stranded DNA, fluorescence enhancement due to dsDNA is ‘turned off’ in the presence of AFB1 due binding of aptamer target over complementary sequence. Self-assembly of a label-free fluorescent aptasensor based on AFB1 aptamer and PicoGreen dye was performed. Due to competition between the complementary sequence and AFB1 target, this rapid method was capable of highly sensitive and selective screening for AFB1 in five types of TCMs. This proposed approach had a limit of detection as low as 0.1 μg·L−1 and good linearity with a range of 0.1–10 μg·L−1 (0.1–10 ppb). Among the 20 samples tested, 6 batches were found to be contaminated with AFB1 using this method, which was confirmed using sophisticated liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry analysis. The results of this study indicate the developed method has the potential to be a simple, quick, and sensitive tool for detecting AFB1 in TCMs.

Background/Aim: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been shown to have a correlation to metastasis and prognosis of patients with cancer. The enumeration and downstream gene analysis of CTCs have attracted efforts for personalized medicine. However, enumeration and phenotypic profiling in most capture devices are challenging due to the rarity and heterogeneity of CTCs. Here, we report an aptamer-cocktail strategy coupled in nano-microfluidic chip for enhancing isolation performance and characterizing the phenotypes of CTCs. Materials and Methods: Aptamer-cocktail recognizing EpCAM/Vimentin/EGFR/CD44 were bound to a nanopillar array on a nano-microfluidic chip. The recognition was validated with cancer cells by flow cytometry and the critical parameters were optimized with the nano-microfluidic chip. Finally, the system was applied to clinical samples. Results: The proposed aptamer-cocktail showed the predominant affinity with MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR-3. When utilized to capture artificial clinical samples, it showed 71% to 83% capture efficiency. CTC detection rate was 100% in five pre-treatment and five post-treatment breast cancer patients. The enumeration data ranged from 6-33 per 2 ml. The number of CTCs in breast cancer patients before therapy was 1.27-2 times higher than that after therapy. CTCs with epithelial and mesenchymal phenotype were both detected and identified; interestingly, the mean diameter of CTC_pck^pos acquired in these cases was much larger than that of CTC_vimentin^pos. Conclusion: The nano-microfluidic chip not only made it easier to phenotyping epithelial-like or mesenchymal-like CTCs, but can also be used to detect downstream genetic variation. The established platform can be applied in clinical research and facilitate auxiliary diagnosis with tumor recurrence and metastasis in advance.

Objective: Cytokines and cell subsets are important components of the tumor microenvironment. Previous research has revealed that there are differences in cytokines and cell subsets in the peripheral blood of lung cancer (LCA) patients before and after eradication. The purpose of this study is to explore the monitoring value of cytokines and cellular subpopulations as biomarkers in post-immunotherapy monitoring of patients with LCA after surgeryMethods: We conducted a case-control study using double-antibody sandwich magnetic microsphere flow cytometry with immunofluorescence technology and fluorescent monoclonal antibody multiparameter flow cytometry to detect differences in peripheral blood cytokines and cell subsets between LCA patients after immunotherapy and healthy controls.Results: Our research results show that there are differences in the levels of IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17, IFN-γ, TNF-α in the peripheral blood of LCA patients (n=70) after immunotherapy compared to the healthy controls (n=55) (P<0.05), and there are differences in 10 cell subgroups including DP T Cells, AT cells, and NLR in the peripheral blood compared to the healthy controls (n=35) (P<0.05). Further analysis revealed significant differences in the detection data of IL-6, IL-10, IFN-γ, CD56^dim NK cells, Total B cells, Total NE cells, CD15⁺M cells, and NLR between LCA deceased patients (n=25) and LCA surviving patients (n=27) during the same period (P<0.05). The continuous monitoring of cytokines and cell subsets is far more valuable than a single-time test, as abnormal fluctuations in the data of cytokines and cell subsets are often associated with poor prognosis. In addition, IL-6 and NLR showed the strongest discriminative ability between postoperative immunotherapy-treated LCA patients and healthy controls, with AUC values of 0.840 and 0.822, respectively. There was a significant association between IFN-γ and distant metastasis in LCA (P<0.05), as well as between CD56^dim NK cells and lymph node infiltration (P<0.05).Conclusion: This research results support peripheral blood cytokines and cell subsets as biomarkers for monitoring the postoperative immune status and predicting the prognosis of LCA patients after immunotherapy. The continuous monitoring of cytokines and cell subsets is far more valuable than a single-time detection.