DiamiR, LLC, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA.
Expert Rev Mol Diagn. 2015 Mar;15(3):329-38. doi: 10.1586/14737159.2014.973858. Epub 2014 Oct 30.
Early disease detection leads to more effective and cost-efficient treatment. It is especially important for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, because progression of these pathologies leads to significant and frequently irreversible changes in underlying pathophysiological processes. At the same time, the development of specific screening tests for detection of each of the hundreds of human pathologies in asymptomatic stage may be impractical. Here, we discuss a recently proposed concept: the development of minimally invasive Universal Screening Test (UST) based on analysis of organ-enriched microRNAs in plasma and other bodily fluids. The UST is designed to detect the presence of a pathology in particular organ systems, organs, tissues or cell types without diagnosing a specific disease. Once the pathology is detected, more specific, and if necessary invasive and expensive, tests can be administered to precisely define the nature of the disease. Here, we discuss recent studies and analyze the data supporting the UST approach.
早期疾病检测可实现更有效且更具成本效益的治疗。对于癌症和神经退行性疾病而言，早期疾病检测尤为重要，因为这些疾病的进展会导致潜在病理生理过程发生重大且常常不可逆转的变化。同时，为无症状阶段的数百种人类疾病中的每一种开发特定的筛查检测可能并不实际。在这里，我们讨论了一个最近提出的概念：基于对血浆和其他体液中富含器官的 microRNAs 的分析，开发微创通用筛查测试（UST）。UST 的设计目的是检测特定器官系统、器官、组织或细胞类型中是否存在病理，而无需诊断特定疾病。一旦检测到病理，就可以进行更具体的、如果必要的侵入性和昂贵的测试，以准确确定疾病的性质。在这里，我们讨论了最近的研究，并分析了支持 UST 方法的数据。
