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The Problem
Cancer is Australia’s leading cause of burden of disease. Pancreatic Cancer is considered among the deadliest and most aggressive and is associated with an extremely high mortality rate.
Each year in Australia approx. 3,350 men and women are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (around 460,000 cases globally) with only 8.7% surviving beyond 5 years.
The high mortality rates are typically associated with late prognosis, which is why early detection is crucial as it enables treatment in its pre-invasive state, leading to greater chances of survivor.
Solutions
Technion’s researchers, led by A. Prof. Ester Segal (pictured) are developing a lab-on-a-chip technology to allow sensitive and rapid detection of pancreatic cancer biomarkers at the initiation stages (precursor stages to malignant cancer and the ideal stage for diagnosis).
These new biosensors will integrate a porous silicon transducer, a sponge-like nanomaterial with tunable optical properties, with novel biological components termed aptamers. The latter are DNA molecules that can recognise and tightly bind the biomarker molecules to the silicon nanomaterials to produce a measurable signal by changing the optical properties of the silicon nanomaterial.
Potential impact
Producing results within minutes these cost-effective biosensing devices could be employed for a population-wide screening test for pancreatic cancer in the clinic or at home.