Discovery and Proof-of-Concept Study of Nuclease Activity as a Novel Biomarker for Breast Cancer Tumors

Breast cancer is one of the most common pathologies diagnosed in the clinical practice. Despite major advancements in diagnostic approaches, there is no widely accepted biomarker in the clinical practice that can diagnose breast malignancy. Confirmatory diagnosis still relies on the pathological assessment of tissue biopsies by expert pathologists. Thus, there is an unmet need for new types of biomarkers and novel platform technologies that can be easily and robustly integrated into the clinic and that can assist pathologists. Herein, we show that nuclease activity associated to malignant tumors can be used as a novel biomarker in breast cancer, which can be detected via specific degradation of nucleic acid probes. In this study we have identified a set of three chemically modified nucleic acid probes that can diagnose malignancy in biopsy samples with high accuracy (89%), sensitivity (82%) and specificity (94%). This work represents a breakthrough for the potential clinical use of nuclease activity as biomarker, which can be detected via nucleic acids probes, for the clinical diagnosis of malignancy in breast tissue biopsies. This platform technology could be readily implemented into the clinic as adjunct to histopathological diagnostic.

Crosslinker-modified nucleic acid probes for improved target identification and biomarker detection

Crosslinker-modified nucleic acid probes are promising substitutes for regular oligonucleotide probes in hybridization-based assays, as they allow a more selective and efficient detection of nucleic acid targets and nucleic acid biomarkers.

DNA Nanostructure-Based Nucleic Acid Probes: Construction and Biological Applications

In recent years, DNA has been widely noted as a kind of material that can be used to construct building blocks in biosensing, in vivo imaging, drug development, and disease...

Xeno nucleic acid probes mediated methylation-specific PCR for single-base resolution analysis of N6-methyladenosine in RNAs

Reliable and cost-effective quantification of RNA modifications at a specific gene locus is essential to elucidate the pathogenic mechanism encoded by RNA epigenetics. Current methods to quantify N6-methyladenosine (m6A) at...

Nuclease-resistant signaling nanostructures made entirely of DNA oligonucleotides

Nucleic acid probes have the advantages of excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, low toxicity and remarkable programmability. However, the low biostability of nucleic acid probes under complex physiological conditions limits the in...