A novel platform for nucleic acid biomarker-based diagnosis of thyroid cancer.

The standard of care for patients with clinically significant thyroid nodules is an ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy with cytologic evaluation.  Nearly 20% of patients are found to have indeterminate cytology, requiring surgical thyroidectomy to exclude malignancy; nucleic acid-based biomarkers to improve diagnosis are promising, but there is clearly a need for improved technology to bring these into common clinical practice.  Here we demonstrate the use of a thermoplastic disposable microfluidic chip to extract nucleic acids from thyroid cancer cell lines and thyroid tissue for potential use as a rapid cancer diagnostic. The micro-solid phase extraction chip was used to extract microRNA, mRNA, and DNA from the well characterized thyroid cancer cell line BCPAP and from human thyroid tissue obtained during surgery. In our study, we successfully used the microchip to extract and detect thyroid-cancer associated nucleic acids from as few as 50-500 cells (fewer cells than in a typical one milliliter fine needle aspirate) and from human thyroid specimens. Our data suggest this microfluidic platform may serve as a technology that may improve the speed, reliability and cost of thyroid cancer diagnosis in cases of indeterminate cell aspirates.
Source: Head and Neck Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research