Bio-Memristor Based on Clinical Bile Samples: A Proof-of-Concept Pilot Study for Detection of Gallbladder Cancer

Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is the most common malignant tumor of the biliary system, and the 5-year survival rate of GBC patients is only 5% due to delayed diagnosis. The sensitivity and specificity of existing clinical testing equipment for gallbladder malignancy remain insufficient. In this proof-of-concept pilot study, we developed a bio-memristor featuring an Ag/bile/fluorine-doped tin oxide structure using clinically sourced bile samples from a small clinical cohort and characterized its resistive switching behavior. The memristive electrical signatures, particularly negative peak current and the high-resistance-state to low-resistance-state ratio, differed systematically across people with normal gallbladder, cholelithiasis patients, and GBC patients, enabling a two-step detection strategy. Within this pilot cohort, the detection performance was encouraging. These findings establish the technical feasibility of memristor-based bile detection for gallbladder cancer and provide a foundation for developing detection technology that is expected to complement existing clinical approaches to improve gallbladder cancer identification.