Description of an activity-based enzyme biosensor for lung cancer detection

Lung cancer is associated with the greatest cancer mortality as it typically presents with incurable distributed disease. Biomarkers relevant to risk assessment for the detection of lung cancer continue to be a challenge because they are often not detectable during the asymptomatic curable stage of the disease. A solution to population-scale testing for lung cancer will require a combination of performance, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and simplicity.

One solution is to measure the activity of serum available enzymes that contribute to the transformation process rather than counting biomarkers. Protease enzymes modify the environment during tumor growth and present an attractive target for detection. An activity based sensor platform sensitive to active protease enzymes is presented. A panel of 18 sensors was used to measure 750 sera samples from participants at increased risk for lung cancer with or without the disease.

A machine learning approach is applied to generate algorithms that detect 90% of cancer patients overall with a specificity of 82% including 90% sensitivity in Stage I when disease intervention is most effective and detection more challenging.

This approach is promising as a scalable, clinically useful platform to help detect patients who have lung cancer using a simple blood sample. The performance and cost profile is being pursued in studies as a platform for population wide screening.