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A dielectrophoretic method of discrimination between normal oral epithelium, and oral and oropharyngeal cancer in a clinical setting

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posted on 2016-04-20, 11:46 authored by K.A. Graham, H.J. Mulhall, F.H. Labeed, Mark LewisMark Lewis, K.F. Hoettges, N. Kalavrezos, J. McCaul, C. Liew, S. Porter, S. Fedele, M.P. Hughes
Despite the accessibility of the oral cavity to clinical examination, delays in diagnosis of oral and oropharyngeal carcinoma (OOPC) are observed in a large majority of patients, with negative impact on prognosis. Diagnostic aids might help detection and improve early diagnosis, but there remains little robust evidence supporting the use of any particular diagnostic technology at the moment. The aim of the present feasibility first-in-human study was to evaluate the preliminary diagnostic validity of a novel technology platform based on dielectrophoresis (DEP). DEP does not require labeling with antibodies or stains and it is an ideal tool for rapid analysis of cell properties. Cells from OOPC/dysplasia tissue and healthy oral mucosa were collected from 57 study participants via minimally-invasive brush biopsies and tested with a prototype DEP platform using median membrane midpoint frequency as main analysis parameter. Results indicate that the current DEP platform can discriminate between brush biopsy samples from cancerous and healthy oral tissue with a diagnostic sensitivity of 81.6% and a specificity of 81.0%. The present ex vivo results support the potential application of DEP testing for identification of OOPC. This result indicates that DEP has the potential to be developed into a low-cost, rapid platform as an assistive tool for the early identification of oral cancer in primary care; given the rapid, minimally-invasive and non-expensive nature of the test, dielectric characterization represents a promising platform for cost-effective early cancer detection.

Funding

We would like to thank the National Institute for Health Research-NIHR for funding this work through Research for Innovation, Speculation and Creativity Program RC-PG-0407-10123 and Invention for Innovation Program ES-1010-10163, as well as the Finance South East Collaboration Fund. UCL/UCLH received a proportion of funding from the Department of Health’s NIHR Biomedical Research Centre funding scheme. KAG was funded by a PhD studentship from Labtech International.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

The Analyst

Volume

140

Issue

15

Pages

5198 - 5204

Citation

GRAHAM, K. ... et al., 2015. A dielectrophoretic method of discrimination between normal oral epithelium, and oral and oropharyngeal cancer in a clinical setting. Analyst, 140 (15), pp.5198-5204.

Publisher

© RSC

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Publication date

2015

ISSN

0003-2654

eISSN

1364-5528

Language

  • en

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