Abstract

Screening for Tumor-Derived Exosomes for Early Detection of Lung Cancer

Lydia Sohn, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

Late-stage diagnosis is the major contributor to the poor survival of lung cancer patients: 57% of patients diagnosed with lung cancer have metastatic disease and an abysmal 5-year survival rate of 5.7%.  The lack of symptoms specific to early-stage lung cancer and the low sensitivity and high cost of current screening methods (e.g. computed tomography) are current barriers to early diagnosis.  To address this challenge and enable lung-cancer screening, we are developing a sensitive, simple-to-use, and readily accessible platform to screen for lung tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) in saliva.  In this talk, I will discuss our platform, which is based on “Node-Pore Sensing” (NPS), and our work up to date in this challenging goal.