Physics Professor Develops
Cancer Detecting Nanodevice
By Craig Joseph, Staff Writer, DA
Morgantown, WV, August 2, 2006: With the combined efforts of three West Virginia University professors, a device was created that will serve as an early detector for various types of cancer.
Dr. David Lederman, Eberly College physics professor, Dr. Peter Gannett of the WVU School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Daniel Flynn, associate director for basic research at the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, are awaiting patent protection on a nanodevice that tests a patient's biological fluid for a cancer marker protein called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor.
The amount of VEGF produced in the body is correlated with whether a person has many types of common cancers, such as breast or lung cancer, Gannett said.
The device is about the size of an eraser tip on a pencil but elongated with a sharp point on one end called a cantilever, Flynn said.
Antibodies (proteins that identify harmful antigens, or toxins), called anti-VEGF, are attached to the tip of the cantilever to capture the antigen, VEGF.
When the cantilever coated with the antibody runs into VEGF, the VEGF sticks and the weight of the cantilever increases, Gannett said.
"So we have a very small cantilever, which sort of resembles a diving board. Flick it, and it will vibrate. Flick it again, it'll vibrate the same weight. This is its natural vibration frequency. Now, add weight to it, flick it, and it will vibrate more slowly. If a sample has VEGF, it will bind to the anti body, increase the weight, and there will be a change in frequency," Gannett said. "It is actually a very simple device except for the size."
Flynn said when the VEGF protein binds to the antibodies, the tip of the cantilever bends by one angstrom or more, which can be measured using a laser.
An angstrom is a unit of length equal to 100-millionth of a centimeter.
"Initial discussions of how to make this were started in December during finals week. The physicists calculated how to make it and the probability that it would work. The prototype device was ready for testing in April," Flynn said.
In addition to Gannett, Flynn, and Lederman, additional research and development for the device has been carried out by graduate student Jarod Kabulski, post-doctoral student Dr. Jianhua Gu, undergraduate student Cristina Pastuch and research assistant Odille Meyers, PhD.
Funding for development of the apparatus has come from the West Virginia Nanotechnology Initiative, which has recently been expanded by a $13.5 million state-wide grant from the National Science Foundation and Governor Joe Manchin.
Additional funding has been given by the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center. The group has also requested $250,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health. The application is pending, Gannett said.
"A prototype device has an estimate cost of $40,000-$50,000, and this is doing all the work on campus (as inexpensive as it gets). A production device may be simpler than what we are constructing and might cost less to make, but this also depends on how many get made, etc," Gannett said.
Including the equipment required to connect the cantilever device to the real world and measure its vibration frequency, everything could fit into a small suitcase, according to Gannett.
The device will be used on patients for the first time this summer when the group will begin screening stage IV lung cancer patients in attempts to show that VEGF can be detected in their sputum (the biological fluid used in tests), Flynn said.
"The idea is this; most lung cancers are found by accident, say by an x-ray obtained because someone thinks they may have pneumonia," Gannett said.
If instead a tumor is found, it will likely be 1-2 centimeters in size and therefore probably be closer to stage III. At stage III, a patient has about an eight percent chance of living more than five years, Gannett said.
"What we hope is that the cantilever based device can be used in routine screening of all patients as part of an annual check-up and that if a person has cancer, the method will detect it as stage I or II where the odds of living more than five years are nearly 50 percent," Gannett added.
Gannett said the cost of screening to patients will be quite low and in the vicinity of many standard blood tests.
W-V-U