Research Projects

The aim of the current study is to develop a novel antibody based disposable immunoassay as a novel point-of-care test for the early detection of oral cancers using saliva as the matrix. The proposed research aims to express the antigen, raise anti-vimentin antibodies in Chicken for developing IgY antibodies as capture and detection reagent for monitoring of secreted vimentin expression in saliva and developing a dual colour plasmonic ELISA for visual detection of vimentin in the saliva of oral cancer patients. There is a need for newer ways to identify patients before they develop the disease in the pre-cancerous stage and also to help patients in disease monitoring after treatment that can help in risk stratification of high-risk patients for appropriate tailoring the salvage options. There is currently no molecular or even histopathological pathognomonic hallmark that can predict malignant transformation of potentially malignant disorders and the analysis of the clinical aspects of these lesions remains the best way to monitor, control and prevent the development of oral SCC. The potentially malignant or pre-malignant lesions at risk of transformation needs to be followed up closely for a very long time to identify the high-risk cases for an early intervention. A biopsy with subsequent microscopic examination from the lesion tissue is necessary in identification of OPMD. Vimentin is a structural protein responsible for cell integrity and its over expression has been correlated to the degree of malignancy and cancer progression. Vimentin expression has been observed in the cellular cytoplasm, nucleus, on the cell surface and extra cellularly by way of secretion. As such vimentin unregulated expression in cancer serves as an attractive target for developing drug as well as novel clinical prognostic and diagnostic tools. Vimentin gets expressed in mesenchymal cells and has been recognized as a marker for epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Detection of expressed vimentin in the precancerous lesions of the oral cavity especially in the epithelial-mesenchymal transitioned cells without resorting to histo-diagnosis. With this rationale, the current study proposes to develop an antibody based dual colour plasmonic ELISA for visual detection of expressed vimentin in saliva samples that will be accurate, sensitive, specific, user friendly, robust, equipment free and delivered at low-cost for point-of-care oral cancer visual screening by any untrained health care worker without the need for any equipment or laboratory-based testing. This is a very relevant option because molecular events related to tumorigenesis have already occurred before the appearance of visible lesions and typical clinical symptoms. Testing for those early events can facilitate the early screening of OSCC and provide reliable evidence to actively handle such potentially malignant lesions.