Disease-specific protein corona sensor arrays may have disease detection capacity

The earlier any catastrophic disease (e.g., cancer) is diagnosed, themore likely it can be treated, providing improved patient prognosis,extended survival and better quality of life. In early 2014, we revealedthat various types of disease can substantially affect the composition/profile of protein corona (i.e., a layer of biomolecules that forms at thesurface of nanoparticles upon their interactions with biological fluids).Here, by combining the concepts of disease-specific protein coronaand sensor array technology we developed a platform with diseasedetection capacity using blood plasma. Our sensor array consists ofthree cross-reactive liposomes, with distinct lipid composition andsurface charge. Rather than detecting a specific biomarker, the sensorarray provides pattern recognition of the corona protein compositionadsorbed on the liposomes. As a feasibility study, sensor array validationwas performed using plasma samples obtained from patients diagnosedwith five different cancer types (i.e. lung cancer, glioblastoma, meningioma,myeloma, and pancreatic cancer) and a control group of healthydonors. Although no single corona composition is specific for any onecancer type, overlapping but distinct patterns of the corona compositionconstitutes a unique ‘‘fingerprint’’ for each type of cancer (with ahigh classification accuracy, i.e. 99.4%). To finally probe the capacity ofthis sensor array for early detection of cancers, we used cohort plasmaobtained from healthy people who were subsequently diagnosedseveral years after plasma collection with lung, brain, and pancreaticcancers. Our results suggest that the disease-specific protein coronasensor array will not only be instrumental in the screening, detection,and identification of diseases, but may also help identify novel proteinpattern markers whose role in disease development and/or diseasebiology has not been appreciated so far.