Project-ID: LS19-013
Project start: 01. January 2021
Runtime: 36 months / ongoing
Funding amount: € 290.000,00

Brief summary

Being the leading type of cancer occurring in the population, breast cancer is also the second leading cause of death among female cancer patients. It is generally discovered when already symptomatic and is fully diagnosed after taking a clinical picture and anamnesis from the patient, and subjecting the patient to mammography, a biopsy of the concerning lump, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and skeletal scintigraphy, rather invasive and distressing procedures. Certain blood markers can be monitored to determine the efficacy of prescribed therapy.

As it is highly treatable if discovered early, breast cancer screening initiatives offer annual and biennial mammography screenings, suggested for women between ages 45 and 69. Though in major part beneficial, a high degree of cumulative false positive results of the screenings worldwide have been reported as 61% in annual and 42% in biennial screenings, leading to overdiagnosis, overtreatment, increased cancer-related anxiety, increased number of follow-up biopsies and potential screening-radiation induced cancer deaths.

Within this project, we propose to develop a simple, painless, non-invasive point-of-care breath sensing device for diagnostics of breast cancer. Namely, the metabolome of breast cancer patients bears several biomarkers. Specifically, five biomarkers were detected in alveolar breath of cancer patients via GC-MS: 1-phenyl-ethanone, 2,3-dihydro-1-phenyl-4(1H)-quinazolinone, heptanal, isopropyl myristate, and 2-propanol, predicting breast cancer with 93.8% of sensitivity and 84.6% of specificity.

As GC-MS is an expensive and time-consuming method, development of simpler sensing devices for aforementioned biomarkers has been described in literature: a chromatography based-point-of-care sensing device, and a nanowire array sensor with Palladium (Pd), Polypyrrole (PPy) and Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires.

We intend to improve the sensing capabilities of these two devices by implementing molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) as recognition elements onto QCM electrodes and chemiresistor sensing systems. As materials with incorporated „molecular memory“, primarily molecularly imprinted nanoparticles and molecularly imprinted conductive polymers will be synthesized and deposited onto QCM electrodes. This will be done in cooperation with prof. Peter Lieberzeit (UniVie), with an extensive experience in synthesis of MIPs and their use in QCM devices for gas sensing.

Once both types of QCM sensors will be optimized, we intend to implement the imprinted polymers onto a chemiresistor sensing device with a low production cost and USB-connectivity ($-sensor), developed in a collaboration between Dr. Johannes Bintinger (AIT) and Dr. Philipp Fruhmann (CEST). Optimizing the latter will be the last stepping stone of our project and will give us an excellent prerequisite to form a simple, cheap, portable and non-invasive point-of-care device for prediction of breast cancer in alveolar breath.

Keywords:
Polymer chemistry, Analytical chemistry, Physical chemistry, Organic chemistry