Extracellular Vesicle Protein Panel Enables Early Lung Cancer Detection in a Large Clinical Cohort

Area of Science:

• Biomarkers and Diagnostics
• Oncology
• Extracellular Vesicles

Background:

• Early detection of lung cancer significantly improves patient outcomes.
• Current diagnostic methods for early-stage lung cancer face limitations.
• Extracellular vesicle (EV)-based liquid biopsy offers a promising avenue for non-invasive cancer detection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate an EV membrane protein panel as a diagnostic tool for early-stage lung cancer.
• To validate the efficacy and clinical applicability of the EV-based diagnostic panel.
• To develop a rapid and accurate method for detecting early lung cancer using liquid biopsy.

Main Methods:

• A cohort of 302 healthy individuals and 645 lung cancer patients was recruited.
• A diagnostic panel, EV early lung cancer membrane protein 5 (EV^ELC-M5), comprising five EV membrane proteins was developed.
• High-throughput Nano-biochip Integrated System for Liquid Biopsy (HNCIB) was utilized for rapid, single EV-level analysis.

Main Results:

• The EV^ELC-M5 panel accurately differentiated early lung cancer patients from controls (AUC=0.926).
• The panel demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy for small lung nodules (≤ 8 mm, AUC=0.931).
• EV-SFTPA1 showed high sensitivity (89.4%) and robust tissue specificity for early lung cancer detection.

Conclusions:

• The EV^ELC-M5 panel, combined with HNCIB, is an effective diagnostic toolset for early lung cancer detection.
• This approach significantly enhances the diagnosis of early-stage lung cancer.
• EV-SFTPA1 represents a novel and effective biomarker for early lung cancer screening.