The miRNA-DisEASY network aims to tackle the emerging needs in clinical diagnostics for the early and selective diagnosis of lung cancer, which is a malignant neoplasm representing the leading worldwide cause of cancer-related death.
This high mortality is due to the poor prognosis of the disease, caused by late disease presentation, tumour heterogeneities within histological subtypes, and the relatively limited understanding of tumour biology. Most lung cancer patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage of disease, and, although a small subset of these patients can be treated with new drugs offering improved survival and reasonable quality of life, the majority of patients can only be treated with palliative chemotherapy. Overall survival remains poor, and many patients die within a few months of diagnosis.
Biomarkers able to stratify for the subtype of lung cancer, prognosticate the course of disease, or predict the response to treatment are in increasing demand. Lung cancer subtyping has traditionally relied on the histopathological observation of resected specimens, bronchoscopic biopsies, fine needle aspirations or sputum, which represent samples with decreasing invasiveness for the patient, but also of increasing challenge for the pathologist, as proportionally fewer tumour cells are captured.
In the last decade, miRNAs measured in resected tumour samples have emerged as biomarkers for tumor diagnosis, prognosis and prediction of response to treatment, thanks to their extreme specificity. Moreover, miRNAs present in sputum, in plasma, in serum or in whole blood have increasingly been explored as less invasive biomarkers for the early detection of cancers.
Given the great relevance of a precocious and a more specific diagnosis of lung cancer, the miRNA-DisEASY programme seeks to address this major world health issue advancing three main project objectives:
1. identification of miRNA biomarkers involved in lung cancer pathogenesis;
2. development of a new and low cost sensor kit to reliably detect the identified miRNA biomarkers;
3. Initial small scale clinical sample testing, that could lead to a significant investment in a healthcare product capable of delivering a high specificity, low invasive test for lung cancer, based on a microRNA biomarker panel.
Inspired by the relevant problems of analyzing clinically valuable miRNAs biomarkers, the partners successfully merged two innovative technologies. The chemical-NAT technology delivers a rapid direct detection of miRNAs from biological fluids with a single mismatch discrimination. The optical-based device brings the advantages of being sensitive, low cost and with an high degree of miniaturization. Accurate miRNAs profiling without extraction, pre-amplification, or pre-labelling of the target is now made achievable.
