Collaborative Research: A Point-of-Care Device for Diagnosis and Management of Pulmonary Diseases

肺癌是癌症相关死亡的最常见原因。发烧或疲劳等症状是非特异性的，而其他指标则是许多其他疾病的典型症状。开发一种可靠的技术，在尽可能早的阶段发现肺癌，对成功的结果至关重要。几种相互竞争的技术证明了它们诊断中晚期肺癌的能力，但未能发现早期癌症，这显著降低了它们的实用性。该项目将合成一组与早期肺癌有关的新型光学生物传感器和指示器。这种新型的无创、经济、可靠的筛查工具的开发将对整个肺癌预防领域产生革命性的影响。该团队将通过专注于一组生物标记物(基质金属蛋白酶和组织蛋白)来实现技术原理证明，这些生物标记物已被证明在检测第一阶段非小细胞肺癌(NSCLC)方面成功，非小细胞肺癌是最常见的肺癌形式。将开发一种集成的微流控设备来处理一种新型的纳米生物传感器，该传感器旨在检测大量的酶。将由拟议的设备检测的生物标记物面板将首先基于从动物模型收集的样本进行优化，然后基于人类患者收集的样本进行优化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death. Symptoms, such as fever or fatigue, are unspecific while other indicators are typical of many other diseases. Development of a reliable technique that detects lung cancer at the earliest possible stage, is critical for successful outcomes. Several competing techniques demonstrated their ability to diagnose intermediate and late stage lung cancer, but failed to detect early stage cancer which significantly decreases their utility. This project will synthesize a set of novel optical biosensors and indicators that have been implicated in early stage lung cancer. The development of this novel non-invasive, cost effective, and reliable screening tool would be transformative for the whole field of lung cancer prevention. The team will achieve technical proof-of-principle by focusing on a set of biomarkers (matrix metalloproteinases and cathepsins) that have been shown to be successful in detecting stage 1 non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of lung cancer. An integrated microfluidic device will be developed to handle a new class of nano-biosensors designed to detect a large number of enzymes. The panel of biomarkers that will be detected by the proposed device will be optimized based on samples collected from animal models first, and human patients later. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteriaThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.