Detection EGFR exon 19 status of lung cancer patients by DNA electrochemical biosensor

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 19 mutation status is a very important prediction index for tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) therapy. In this paper, we constructed a superior selective sandwich-type electrochemical biosensor to detect in-frame deletions in exon 19 of EGFR in real samples of patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma. Based on the characteristics of different hybridization efficiency in different hybridization phase conditions, different region around EGFR exon 19 deletion hotspots was selected to design DNA probes to improve biosensor performance. The results confirm that alteration of deletion location in target deliberately according to different hybridization phase is able to improve selectivity of sandwich-type DNA biosensor. Satisfactory discrimination ability can be achieved when the deletions are located in the capture probe interaction region. In order to improve efficiency of ssDNA generation from dsDNA, we introduce Lambda exonuclease (λ-exo) to sandwich-type biosensor system. EGFR exon 19 statuses of clinical real samples from lung cancer patients can be discriminated successfully by the proposed method. Our research would make the electrochemical biosensor be an excellent candidate for EGFR detection for lung cancer patients.