(624a) A Novel Biosensor System on Microfluidic Platform for Diagnosis of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is among the most fatal cancer diseases for women world wide. As is true with most other cancer diseases, it is often futile and disfiguring to treat the cancer when it reaches its advanced stages. Therefore, it is crucial to develop techniques that are capable of detecting breast tumor formation accurately at its earliest stage and subsequently take appropriate measures for treatment.¹ Described here is a novel biosensor system on the platform of microfluidic devices, which is targeting on early onset breast cancer biomarkers, both gene and protein biomarkers, in order to obtain high through-put, sensitive, and accurate diagnosis of breast cancers. The high-throughput is coming from the intrinsic property of the multiplexed microfluidic platform,² while fluorescence detection method ensures the high sensitivity merit. Multiple biomarkers will be targeted simultaneously through a unique format called universal array³ to reduce false positives and false negatives, and the inherently high specific interactions between the probe molecules and the targeting analytes add another level of selectivity which will further reduce false positives and false negatives. Included in the talk are pretreatment and biofunctionalization of the microfluidic substrate,^4,5experimental design and results for semi-synthesis of each type of targeting biomarkers. monitoring of the progress of each step was carried out systematically by various complementary analytical tools such as slab gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, fluorescence microscopy. This novel biosensor system will bring closer to realization the individualized point-of-care diagnosis of cancer diseases in general.

References:

1. Yoshio Miki, Jeff Swensen, Donna Shattuck-Eidens, et al., Science 266, 66-71 (1994). 2. Steven A. Soper, Sean M. Ford, Shize Qi, Robin L. McCarley, Kevin Kelly, and Michael C. Murphy, Analytical Chemistry 72, 642A-651A (2000) 3. Reyna Favis, Joseph P. Day, Norman P. Gerry, Catherine Phelan, Steven Narod, and Francis Barany, Nature Biotechnology 18, 561-564 (2000) 4. Suying Wei, Bikas Vaidya, Ami Patel, Steven A. Soper and Robin L. McCarley, Journal of Physical Chemistry B 109, 16988-16996 (2005) 5. Suying Wei, Steven A. Soper and Robin L. McCarley, Polymer Preprints 45, 434-435 (2004)