Microchip Developed that Can Detect Type, Severity of Cancer

Canadian researchers have utilized nanomaterials to develop a microchip sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of a patient's cancer so that the disease can be detected earlier for more effective treatment.

The pioneering project, reported in the September 27, 2009, issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, foresees an era when advanced molecular diagnostics will become commonplace. "This remarkable innovation is an indication that the age of nanomedicine is dawning,” said Prof. David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto (UT; ON, Canada) and a professor of medicine. "Thanks to the breadth of expertise here at UT, cross-disciplinary collaborations of this nature make such landmark advances possible.”

The researchers' new device can easily sense the signature biomarkers that indicate the presence of cancer at the cellular level, even though these bimolecular markers--genes that indicate aggressive or benign forms of the disease and differentiate subtypes of the cancer--are typically present only at low levels in biologic samples. Analysis can be completed in 30 minutes, a vast improvement over the existing diagnostic procedures that generally take days.

"Today, it takes a room filled with computers to evaluate a clinically relevant sample of cancer biomarkers and the results aren't quickly available,” said Dr. Shana Kelley, a professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and the Faculty of Medicine, who was a lead investigator on the project and a coauthor on the publication. "Our team was able to measure biomolecules on an electronic chip the size of your fingertip and analyze the sample within half an hour. The instrumentation required for this analysis can be contained within a unit the size of a BlackBerry.”

Dr. Kelley, along with engineering professor Dr. Ted Sargent, a fellow lead investigator and UT's Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology, and an interdisciplinary team from Princess Margaret Hospital and Queen's University (Toronto, ON, Canada), found that traditional, flat metal electrical sensors were inadequate to sense cancer's specific biomarkers. Instead, they designed and fabricated a chip and decorated it with nanometer-sized wires and molecular "bait.”

"Uniting DNA--the molecule of life--with speedy, miniaturized electronic chips is an example of cross-disciplinary convergence,” said Dr. Sargent. "By working with outstanding researchers in nanomaterials, pharmaceutical sciences, and electrical engineering, we were able to demonstrate that controlled integration of nanomaterials provides a major advantage in disease detection and analysis.”

The speed and accuracy provided by their device is welcome news to cancer researchers. "We rely on the measurement of biomarkers to detect cancer and to know if treatments are working,” noted Dr. Tom Hudson, president and scientific director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. "The discovery by Dr. Kelley and her team offers the possibility of a faster, more cost-effective technology that could be used anywhere, speeding up diagnosis and helping to deliver a more targeted treatment to the patient.”

The researcher's microchip platform has been tested on prostate cancer, as described in a recent study published in ACS Nano, and head and neck cancer models. It could potentially be used to diagnose and assess other cancers, as well as infectious diseases such as HIV, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and H1N1 flu.

"The system developed by the Kelley/Sargent team is a revolutionary technology that could allow us to track biomarkers that might have significant relevance to cancer, with a combination of speed, sensitivity, and accuracy not available with any current technology,” stated Dr. Fei-Fei Liu, a radiation oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital and head of Applied Molecular Oncology Division, Ontario Cancer Institute. "This type of approach could have a profound impact on the future management for our cancer patients.”

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