Breast cancer diagnosis using a microfluidic multiplexed immunohistochemistry platform.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Cancer Diagnostics
• Microfluidics

Background:

• Biomarkers are crucial for cancer risk assessment, treatment response evaluation, and recurrence detection.
• Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a key diagnostic tool for identifying therapeutic biomarkers in breast cancer.
• Existing IHC platforms lack multiplexing capabilities for personalized cancer therapy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a microfluidics-based multiplexed IHC (MMIHC) platform.
• To assess the platform's efficiency in time and tissue consumption, quantification, and consistency.
• To enable simultaneous analysis of multiple biomarkers for improved cancer diagnosis and personalized treatment.

Main Methods:

• A microfluidics-based platform was designed for multiplexed IHC (MMIHC).
• Conventional thin-section human breast tissues were applied directly onto the chip without modification.
• Four key biomarkers (ER, HER2, PR, Ki-67) were simultaneously examined on breast cancer cells and tissues.

Main Results:

• The MMIHC platform demonstrated robust fluid control, preventing leakage, bubbles, and cross-contamination.
• MMIHC improved immunoreaction, significantly reducing assay time and reagent consumption.
• High concordance (Kendall's coefficient > 0.90) was observed between MMIHC and conventional whole-section analysis, even with scarce needle biopsy samples.

Conclusions:

• The MMIHC platform was successfully applied to human clinical tissue samples for histopathological diagnosis of breast cancer.
• Simultaneous investigation of multiple cancer-related proteins on a single section offers significant advantages over standard IHC.
• This novel approach facilitates individualized cancer therapy by enabling multiplex biomarker analysis on small specimens.