? ? Current technologies for cancer diagnosis and prognosis are limited by throughput and cost. In recognition of this challenge, the Cancer Prevention Research Small Grant Program (PAR-06-313) seeks to fund pilot and feasibility studies related to identification, development, and evaluation of biological analytic techniques, methodologies, and clinical technologies relevant to pre-clinical cancer detection. The central aim of this application is to conduct a pilot study to test a new high-throughput screening tool for the diagnosis and prognosis of lung cancer. The tool will use minute volumes of samples and reagents, will be inexpensive, and, most importantly, will enable high-throughput screening of multiple samples in parallel for the identification and quantitation of bioanalytes predictive of cancer (or cancer biomarkers). These devices will rely on microarray-immunoassay analysis (i.e., assortments of surface-bound detectors for identification of biomarkers), and digital microfluidics, a fluid handling technique in which nanoliter-to-microliter sized droplets are actuated on the surface of an integrated platform. We speculate that the combination of these two technologies will result in a tool capable of significantly improved sample throughput (10-100-fold) and reduced reagent use (10-1000-fold) relative to current techniques. This work will proceed in four specific aims.
Aims one and two are straightforward, comprising optimization of an existing digital microfluidics device for integration with biomarker detection, and assimilation of a microarray-immunoassay into a format compatible with digital microfluidics, respectively. This work, which will be completed in months, will lead to aim three, which encompasses the principal goal of the application: demonstration of an automated digital microfluidics-based detector for cancer biomarkers.
In aim four, the new technique will be applied to analysis of multiple samples in parallel (i.e., multiple patients' serum samples). After completion of pilot studies, our clinical collaborators will help validate the new methods by applying them to screening serum samples from patients with and without lung cancer. We anticipate that this work will result in a more accessible and less expensive method for cancer diagnosis and prognosis, which is a potentially disruptive development that could change the way patients are screened and treated for cancer, world-wide. ? ? ?
