Cancer claims more than 10 million lives every year globally. Research shows that detecting cancer early can greatly improve a patient’s chance of survival. And yet we lack reliable, affordable tools for early detection.
Scientists are now discovering that our bodies may carry early warning signals packaged within tiny, bubble-like particles that circulate in bodily fluids like blood.
In the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, we are developing a new technology to capture these particles and read their signals. Our recent work suggests that the electrical signals of these particles could offer a fast, label-free way to use them for diagnostic applications.
Our goal is to develop simple and non-invasive tests for early cancer detection.
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The challenge of early detection
When cancer is found earlier, physicians can start treatment sooner. This helps to save more lives and lower health-care costs for both families and health-care systems.
However, many cancers are still not diagnosed until they are at an advanced stage. This is often because patients are either asymptomatic or dismiss their symptoms because they ascribe them to less serious causes.
Physicians often use bodily fluid tests to look for hidden warning signs in people who do not yet show symptoms of disease. These tests search for special substances (called biomarkers) that cancer cells release into bodily fluids like blood. But most of these biomarkers are rare and do not last long in the body during the early stages of cancer. Because of this, simple blood or urine tests are less reliable for early cancer detection.
What is needed is a simple tool that is cost-effective and can detect new, more robust biomarkers that current tests are unable to detect. It could then be added to the slate of analyses that are routinely run on bodily fluids.
Our interest in this challenge began with a simple question: What if cancer cells were already sending us quiet hints? Messages we had not yet learned to hear? Learning to detect and interpret these signals could enable earlier detection and help change the story for cancer patients.
Reading cancer’s secret language
Whether they are healthy or not, cells in our bodies are constantly communicating, almost like they are “talking” to each other. One way they do this is by packaging messages into tiny, bubble-like particles known as small extracellular vesicles.
(Sara Hassanpour Tamrin)
The messages in these particles can be in the form of genetic material and other biomolecules.
These particles are released by cells into bodily fluids, which, much like a natural postal system, carry and deliver them to target cells, which read the messages and respond to the information they’ve been given. If we can capture these tiny particles from the bodily fluids and analyze their contents, it should provide us with a snapshot of the health of the cells that made them.
When these particles are released from cancer cells, they carry disease-related information both inside them and on their surface. What makes them especially promising for early cancer detection is that they can appear in bodily fluids long before other biomarkers that have traditionally been used to detect cancer. Often this is well before symptoms begin.
This understanding led our team at the University of Calgary to explore ways to collect these tiny particles from bodily fluids and translate their messages into signals that could help physicians detect cancer sooner and make earlier, more informed treatment decisions.
A novel technology to capture these particles
Although small extracellular vesicles hold great promise for early cancer detection, finding these tiny particles in bodily fluids is not straightforward. They are extremely small, about 500 times smaller than a typical pollen grain, and are mixed with many other components in complex fluids like blood and urine.
As a result, isolating them in a reliable way, without damaging them or losing important information, has been a major scientific challenge.
(Sara Hassanpour Tamrin)
One important idea in this field is to study these particles in their natural state, without adding foreign molecules like antibodies as labels that may alter their properties. As we discussed in a review article, this kind of approach helps preserve the true signals these particles carry and allows for more accurate analysis.
Building on this, we developed a new technology that uses the natural electrical properties of these particles to capture them directly from bodily fluids.
This technology gently collects these particles using electrical force and preserves the information they carry. This represents a new direction in how we study these particles for diagnostic applications. The technology is patent pending.
From lab research to real-world impact
We are now working to bring our new technology, EXOSense, from the lab into real-world diagnostic tools.
(Sara Hassanpour Tamrin)
The EXOSense platform is still under development and needs to be tested with patient samples. It could make a meaningful difference in people’s lives through simple liquid biopsy tests. Much of our work focuses on developing miniaturized platforms, using microfluidic technology, that are both user-friendly and cost-effective.
This approach aims to improve access to diagnostic tools, particularly in under-served communities with limited laboratory infrastructure. Over time, we anticipate this work will lead to a new test that can detect cancer early using just a drop of biofluid and will contribute to reducing the burden of cancer.
