A protein corona-enabled blood test for early cancer detection

Pancreatic cancer is a very aggressive malignancy that is often diagnosed in the advanced stages, with theimplication that long-term survivors are extremely rare. Thus, developing new methods for the earlydetection of pancreatic cancer is an urgent task for current research. To date, nanotechnology offers unprecedentedopportunities for cancer therapeutics and diagnosis. The aim of this study is the developmentof a new pancreatic cancer diagnostic technology based on the exploitation of the nano-biointeractionsbetween nanoparticles and blood samples. In this study, blood samples from 20 pancreaticcancer patients and 5 patients without malignancy were allowed to interact with designed lipid nanoparticles,leading to the formation of a hard “protein corona” at the nanoparticle surface. After isolation,the protein patterns were characterized by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis(SDS PAGE). We found that the protein corona of pancreatic cancer patients was much more enrichedthan that of healthy individuals. Statistical analysis of SDS-PAGE results allowed us to discriminatebetween healthy and pancreatic cancer patients with a total discriminate correctness rate of 88%.