The molecular composition of blood is a signature of our physiology, health state, life-style etc., in many ways a highway of biological information difficult to access. Researchers from iNANO have developed a novel technology, APTASHAPE, to translate this “difficult to read” language into digital information.
APTASHAPE involves the use of billions of small biosensor molecules, based on RNA, to provide a readable imprint of proteins and metabolites present in just a microliter of plasma. Together with researchers from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and the Department of Clinical Medicine, the team has published their analysis for bladder cancer patient samples.
In this report, the APTASHAPE method is used to demonstrate that bladder cancer leaves a specific signature of proteins in the blood of the patients and that it even is possible to predict how far the cancer has progressed.
APTASHAPE is currently being investigated further within the Open Discovery Innovation Network (ODIN), as a novel unbiased and high throughput method for identifying biomarkers of other diseases including liver, kidney and Parkinson’s diseases.
It is the hope that the APTASHAPE approach will pave the way for non-invasive and very early diagnosis of a wide variety of human diseases which will enable more successful treatments.
NAR Cancer
Experimental study
Cells
Differential RNA aptamer affinity profiling on plasma as a potential diagnostic tool for bladder cancer
22-Aug-2022
The researchers declare that there are no conflicts of interest.