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Published May 7, 2017 | public
Journal Article

Towards a personalized approach to aromatase inhibitor therapy: a digital microfluidic platform for rapid analysis of estradiol in core-needle-biopsies

Abstract

Despite advances in breast cancer prevention and treatment, variability in patient-response has revealed the need for a more "personalized" approach to medicine, in which treatments are tailored to each patient's biology. Motivated by this idea, we introduce a technique that allows for quantification of small-molecule analytes directly from core needle biopsy (CNB) tissue samples on a miniaturized platform. The new technique, powered by digital microfluidics, integrates tissue-liquid extraction and magnetic bead-based competitive immunoassay for quantification of estradiol in milligram-sized CNB samples. Each measurement (from start to finish) requires ∼40 minutes, a duration consistent with a visit to a doctor's office. The performance of the new technique was validated by the gold-standard analysis method (high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry), and was applied to evaluate human patient samples before and after a course of treatment with aromatase inhibitor therapy. We propose that the new technique has great potential for eventual use for fast, automated, and quantitative analysis of biomarkers in tissue samples, towards a personalized medicine approach.

Additional Information

© 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry. Received 17th February 2017, Accepted 29th March 2017, First published on the web 5th April 2017. We thank SCIEX, Abbott Laboratories, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) for funding. S. A. thanks the Ministry of Higher Education of Egypt for a fellowship, and A. R. W. thanks the Canada Research Chair (CRC) Program for a CRC.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023