A protein corona sensor array detects breast and prostate cancers

Following exposure to human plasma (HP), nanoparticles (NPs) arecoated with a biomolecular layer referred to as a protein corona.We recently revealed that characterizing the protein coronas ofvarious NPs may provide a unique opportunity for cancer identificationand discrimination. In other words, protein corona profilesof several NPs, when being analyzed using classifiers, wouldprovide a unique “fingerprint” for each type of disease. Here, weprobed the capacity of the protein corona for the identificationand discrimination of breast and prostate cancer patients fromhealthy individuals. Using three lipid NP formulations with distinctphysical–chemical properties as a cross-reactive sensor array and asupervised random forest classifier, we identified a set of proteinsthat showed a significant difference in cancer patients and controlsubjects. Our data show that many of the corona proteins with thehighest discrimination ability between oncological patients andhealthy individuals are related to cellular and molecular aspects ofbreast and prostate cancers.