LAUSR

Abstract It is generally accepted that the cancer should be treated as early as possible, thus, the cancer biomarker detection is of great significance, especially for the ultra-low concentration cancer biomarker. In this work, a stable dinuclear terbium-probenecid cluster Tb2(PROB)6(H2O)2(CH3OH)2 (Tb-PROB, PROB = probenecid) with ultra-high luminescence quantum yield of 83%, the highest record among the reported monomeric (zero-dimensional) lanthanide complex, is obtained based on the self-assembly of Tb3+ and drug of probenecid. Interestingly, systematic investigation indicates that Tb-PROB is a highly sensitive and selective sensor towards liver cancer biomarker of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in both systems of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and the human serum. It shows an ultra-sensitive limit-of-detection (LOD) value of 10−4 ng/mL, which is much lower than the reported cut off AFP concentration for early diagnosis of liver cancer. More importantly, Tb-PROB shows a very short detection time of 7 min.