Associate Professor Shao Huilin and her research team from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute of Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a technology that that is accurate, less invasive and significantly brings forward the evaluation window, by using liquid biopsies.
The technique, termed extracellular vesicle monitoring of small-molecule chemical occupancy and protein expression (ExoSCOPE), is the first of its kind in the world. It takes advantage of extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by cancer cells and circulating in the blood as a reflective indicator of drug effectiveness in solid tumours.
Just only a tiny amount of blood is needed for the test and the test results are complete in an hour. As such the technique does not need to interfere with large numbers of dividing cells, which can cause widespread damage to entire cells, it is less invasive and can help doctors monitor the patient’s treatment process more often, thereby making appropriate and quick adjustments.
“The ExoSCOPE sensor contains millions of gold nanorings to capture the EVs and amplify their drug labelling signals to induce strong light signals. These light signals are then processed to give a readout to indicate drug effectiveness,” said Mr Zhang Yan, a doctoral student from NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering and iHealthtech, and co-first author of the study.
In a clinical trial involving 163 blood samples from 106 patients, the ExoSCOPE has showed encouraging results with lung cancer patients, thereby helping to provide timely assessment of the patient’s main treatment outcome. Compared against the gold standard of tumour volumetric imaging, which was performed at the end of the entire treatment regimen, the ExoSCOPE achieved an accuracy rate of 95 percent, but within 24 hours of treatment initiation.
In the future, the team wants to expand the platform to measure the efficacy of different drugs and apply the technology to a spectrum of diseases from cancers to cardiovascular and neurological diseases. The team also hopes that this technology will be available to the market within the next two years.
According to news.nus.edu.sg
(https://news.nus.edu.sg/nus-researchers-develop-worlds-first-blood-test-for-real-time-monitoring-of-cancer-treatment-success/)
