Issue 14, 2018

An exploration of nucleic acid liquid biopsy using a glucose meter

Abstract

The development of non-invasive techniques for the diagnosis of cancer, characterization of mutation and monitoring treatment response could greatly reduce the morbidity and mortality caused by cancer. Nevertheless, the extremely low amount of cell free nucleic acids makes liquid biopsy a very challenging task. Herein, taking advantage of the pocket size, reliable quantitative results and simple operation of the pocket-sized personal glucose meter (PGM), we report an approach of circulating microRNA-21 (miR-21) detection with high precision and low cost. Via target-induced release of invertase from the DNA–invertase conjugate, which could convert sucrose into glucose, the detection of miR-21 in serum was linked to PGM readings. Combining the DNAzyme feedback amplification (DFA) program and highly efficient enzymatic turnover, an ultralow detection limit of 7 × 10−16 M for miR-21 was achieved using a PGM as the reporter. The high sensitivity and selectivity of the proposed method meets the requirement of quantifying cell free nucleic acids in serum. In addition, this approach fills the shortage of quantitative RT-PCR and next-generation sequencing in quantifying miRNAs with a short length and greatly reduces the cost of detection. We believe that widely used personal diagnosis devices could hold an important place in the booming area of liquid biopsy.

Graphical abstract: An exploration of nucleic acid liquid biopsy using a glucose meter

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
07 Feb 2018
Accepted
28 Feb 2018
First published
01 Mar 2018
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2018,9, 3517-3522

An exploration of nucleic acid liquid biopsy using a glucose meter

Y. Gu, T. Zhang, Z. Huang, S. Hu, W. Zhao, J. Xu and H. Chen, Chem. Sci., 2018, 9, 3517 DOI: 10.1039/C8SC00627J

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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