This nowire device can detect cancer with a urine test

The device was found with potential to efficiently capture extracellular vesicles (EVs) from urine and potentially use them to screen for cancer.

“The ongoing challenge for physicians in any field is to find a non-invasive diagnostic tool that allows them to monitor their patients on a regular basis — for example, a simple urine test,” said lead author Takao Yasui, from the goya University in Japan. 

However, the content of EVs in urine is extremely low, at less than 0.01 per cent of the total fluid volume, which becomes a major barrier to their diagnostic utility.

The new device — embeded with zinc oxide nowires into a specialised polymer — was found highly efficient at capturing these vesicles. 

“Our findings suggest that the device is indeed quite efficient. We obtained a collection rate of over 99 per cent, surpassing ultracentrifugation as well as other methods that are currently being used in the field,” Yasui added.

Using the device, the scientists were able to net over a thousand types of microRs, which are short pieces of ribonucleic acid that play diverse roles in normal cellular biology. 

The presence of certain microRs in urine might serve as a red flag for serious conditions such as bladder and prostate cancer, the study reported in Science Advances showed. To test the device, the team compared the microRs of EVs isolated from healthy patients with those isolated from patients who were already diagnosed with bladder, prostate, and other forms of cancer. Compared with the standard approach, they found a substantially greater number and different types of microRs with just 1 milliliter of urine, the researchers said. (IANS)