Abstract

Nanocytology: Personalizing Cancer Risk Assessment in Primary-Care Setting

Hariharan Subramanian, Research Assistant Professor; Chief Technology Officer, NanoCytomics, Northwestern University

Alterations in higher order chromatin structure are some of the earliest events in carcinogenesis and a marker of field carcinogenesis. These nanoscale markers can be detected by an emerging technology, nanocytology. Clinical studies have shown that the analysis of chromatin nanoarchitecture of cells obtained from easily accessible surrogate tissue sites via nanocytology has a remarkable accuracy for early cancer. This may allow increasing the detection rate of significant pre-neoplastic or neoplastic lesions while reducing overdiagnosis. Data from multi-institutional clinical trials has demonstrated that nanocytology has the potential to become a new platform for cancer screening broadly applicable to a number of neoplasms including lung cancer screening via buccal nanocytology, colon cancer screening via rectal nanocytology, and ovarian cancer screening via endocervical nanocytology.