Cancer Screening Made Simple

Cancer Screening Made Simple
Main Category: Cervical Cancer / HPV Vaccine
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology; Medical Devices / Diagnostics; Genetics
Article Date: 15 Oct 2010 - 3:00 PDT


Current cervical cancer screening is time consuming and expensive, but now new breakthrough technology developed by European researchers should allow large-range screening by non-medical personnel with almost immediate results and at a much lower cost.

Current molecular assays are cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming and require highly trained technicians. New breakthrough technology tackles all these drawbacks and promises to deliver molecular diagnostics to the GP's office and beyond.

The new technology was developed by the EU-funded MicroActive project, and used state-of-the-art micro-fabrication and micro-fluidic technology to create to desktop 'laboratories'. These offer all the advantages of traditional molecular analysis with none of the disadvantages. It promises a revolution in diagnostic instrumentation.

For the project, MicroActive focused on cervical cancer, caused by specific strains of the human papillomavirus virus (HPV). "It was a good test in that you have a symptom, it could be caused by one of seven different viruses, or even two of them, and you want to know which ones. So it is really a typical case where you have a symptom and you have different possible causes identified by different markers," explains Liv Furuberg, researcher with SINTEF and coordinator of MicroActive.

There are over 100 strains of HPV, and the human immune system effectively deals with 97 percent of them. The other 3 percent are deadly. Knowing a patient carries HPV is not particularly helpful. Doctors must know the specific strain and whether the virus is active.

Enter MicroActive's new laboratories, each of which is about the size of a desktop PC. Crucially, this technology reduces a process that typically takes 20 manual steps in a traditional lab down to just two, and as such it can be carried out by anybody who receives some basic training. Unlike lab-based diagnostics, it does not require expert personnel.

There are many possible methods for molecular diagnostics, such as polymerase chain reaction amplification, or immunoassays. But in some cases, these methods can lead to false positives. MicroActive chose to focus instead on messenger Ribo-Nucleic Acid (mRNA) as a marker for an active virus.

Genes get expressive

In gene expression, typically mRNA is transcribed from the DNA template and then carries that 'message' to the ribosome where a protein is then synthesised, or created, from the mRNA in a process called translation.

But mRNA coding for specific proteins, known as E6/E7 proteins, reduces the production of other proteins that regulate the cell cycle, which are important tumour suppressors. Their presence dictates the likelihood of cervical cancer development down the line.

By contrast, the current dominant testing technology for cervical cancer is cell-based tests. These tests return false positives at a rate between 50 and 75 percent. A false positive indicates the presence of the cancer causing virus where in fact it is not present.

Cancer Screening Made Simple