Rafiq Aleena, Kanavarioti Anastassia
Yenos Analytical LLC, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762, USA.
Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Apr 17;26(8):3822. doi: 10.3390/ijms26083822.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the pioneers who reported that microRNAs (miRNAs) regulate and direct the switch between physiological and pathological pathways via their over- or underexpression. The discovery changed the medical landscape and there are many completed and on-going clinical studies based on miRNAs. MiRNAs occur at the femtomolar level in biological fluids and are typically quantified using amplification-based techniques. Experimental nanopores have illustrated potential for trace analysis including amplification-free miRNA quantification. We repurposed the MinION, the only commercially available nanopore array device, and developed unique probes and protocols to detect and measure miRNA copies in blood and urine. Here, we report that miRNA copies are proportional to the total RNA isolated from the biospecimen, and that three known miRNA cancer biomarkers, i.e., miR-21, miR-375, and miR-141, were more than 1.5-fold overexpressed in blood samples from breast, ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, lung, and colorectal cancer patients compared to healthy patients. In these cancer samples, miR-15b was not overexpressed, in agreement with earlier studies. In contrast to literature reports, sample variability was undetectable in this study. The potential and limitations of this ready-to-use MinION/Yenos platform for multiple-cancer early detection (MCED) using blood or urine are discussed.
2024年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖授予了几位先驱者，他们报告称微小RNA（miRNA）通过其过表达或低表达来调节和引导生理与病理途径之间的转换。这一发现改变了医学格局，并且有许多基于miRNA的已完成和正在进行的临床研究。miRNA在生物体液中以飞摩尔水平存在，通常使用基于扩增的技术进行定量。实验性纳米孔已展现出包括无扩增miRNA定量在内的痕量分析潜力。我们对唯一的商用纳米孔阵列设备MinION进行了重新利用，并开发了独特的探针和方案来检测和测量血液及尿液中的miRNA拷贝数。在此，我们报告称miRNA拷贝数与从生物样本中分离出的总RNA成比例，并且与健康患者相比，三种已知的miRNA癌症生物标志物，即miR-21、miR-375和miR-141，在乳腺癌、卵巢癌、前列腺癌、胰腺癌、肺癌和结直肠癌患者的血液样本中过表达超过1.5倍。在这些癌症样本中，miR-15b没有过表达，这与早期研究一致。与文献报道相反，本研究中未检测到样本变异性。本文讨论了这种现成的MinION/Yenos平台用于通过血液或尿液进行多种癌症早期检测（MCED）的潜力和局限性。
