Research Projects

Non-communicable and lifestyle-related diseases like diabetes and cancer are two of the rapidly growing global health challenges. Diabetes contributes in cancer. Among the gynaecological tumours, ovarian cancer (OC) leads for highest mortality rates among women. Recent evidence indicates that diabetes accelerates the progression of OC, leading to an enhanced risk. (Karimi et al.) This proposal is an effort to streamline screening, early diagnosis and detection of cancers and diabetes-related complications through development of efficient nanomaterials-based point of care (PoC) diagnosis tools for detection of specific biomarkers. Compared to testing blood glucose levels, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1C) serves as a more stable biomarker for diabetes. However, portable and precise determination of HbA1c is still challenging. Besides, CA 125 (carbohydrate antigen 125) and HE4 (human epididymal protein 4), are approved as biomarkers for the early detection of OC. Moreover, HE4 is released prior to CA 125, and is also more specific due to its overexpression in OC. (Montagnana et al.) In addition, the protein IL-6 (interleukin-6) is an inflammatory cytokine that acts as a tumour biomarker, particularly in OC. (Lambeck et al) IL-6 released by OC cells indicate progression of the tumour. There are limited findings on the development of PoC platforms for the diagnosis of OC. For HbA1c, people have utilized antibodies aptamers, boronic acid derivatives and enzymes as binding affinity molecules, while using graphene derivatives, other nanomaterials as supporting materials. Interestingly, only one PoC device has been reported, which employed MOF, antibody and DNA aptamer on SPE for HbA1C detection. (Anuthum et al.) For HE4, several sensor systems using antibodies and aptamers have been developed, though none qualify as PoC devices. (Ma, et al.) Aptamer-functionalized graphene derivatives are yet to be explored for HE4 detection. Similarly, for IL-6, there is only one reported PoC device employing aptamer-immobilized graphene, but its inability to function with whole blood samples limits its practical utility. (Hao, et al.) Further, the proposed lab has worked on cardiac troponin I and IL-6 detection with Mn3O4-RGO (Nawab et al.) and NiMoO4 (Greeshma et al.) with antibody. Based on the critical gaps and the clinical importance of HbA1c, HE4 and IL-6 for OC diagnosis, we propose to design an efficient PoC device for the quantitative detection, by incorporating graphene derivatives and antigen binding moieties viz. boronic acid/glucose oxidase (HbA1c) and aptamers (HE4 and IL-6). Additional nanomaterials will be employed to enhance the properties. Electrochemical and SPR-based sensing techniques will be applied as primary detection modalities. These approaches can address the existing limitations related to cost, biocompatibility, portability, and user-friendliness, thereby enabling real-time and PoC monitoring for OC.

PoC device, disease biomarker, HbA1c, HE4, IL-6, graphene derivative