Developing cancer diagnostics for recognizing lung cancer at the localized stage would be very advantageous, because most lung cancer mortalities occur after the cancer has metastasized.In 2013, the American Cancer Society's estimates for lung cancer in the United States are approx. 228,000 new cases and about 160,000 deaths (small and non-small cell lung cancer combined). Lung cancer mortalities account for about 27% of all cancer deaths in the US.Numerous proteases that can be found in the blood and urine of lungcancer patients are of proven diagnostic value. Compared to immunoassays, luminescence assays have the potential to be two orders of magnitude more sensitive and very importantly they are able to detect only chemically active proteases, whereas immunoassays detect always mixture of active proteases and zymogens. Fluorescent nanoplatforms that have been developed and validated in the Bossmann group have been used to determine the protease concentrations of a series of cancer-related proteases (urokinase plasminogen activator, matrix metalloproteinases 2,7,9,11,13 and cathepsins B,D,L,K). 25% of the samples (36 in total) have come from healthy control subjects. The results indicate that early detection of non-small cell lung cancer is possible in stage I.

Lung cancer diagnostics by measuring protease signatures in blood serum

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.