Pinar Zorlutuna, PhD Sheehan Family Collegiate Professor of Engineering Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering  Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (Concurrent) Bioengineering Graduate Program  University of Notre Dame

Portable Device Screens for MicroRNAs to Rapidly Detect Heart Attack

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Pinar Zorlutuna, PhD Sheehan Family Collegiate Professor of Engineering Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering  Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (Concurrent) Bioengineering Graduate Program  University of Notre Dame

Dr. Zorlutuna

Pinar Zorlutuna, PhD
Sheehan Family Collegiate Professor of Engineering
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (Concurrent)
Bioengineering Graduate Program
University of Notre Dame 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the primary cause of death among cardiovascular diseases. The current clinical standard of diagnosis combines echocardiogram (ECG) and several circulating protein biomarkers from plasma. In their current state, both are incapable of distinguishing between patients with and without complete coronary occlusion, unless additional invasive testing is implemented, and both have significant false positive rates.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have shown great potential as rapid and discriminating biomarkers for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) diagnosis.

MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?

Response: This work reports a multiplexed ion-exchange membrane-based miRNA sensor, namely MIX.miR, for detection of specific cardiac-associated miRNA markers in clinical plasma samples from patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD), ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) prior to (STEMI-pre) and following percutaneous coronary intervention (STEMI-PCI), and no evident coronary artery disease (NCAD) groups. Our MIX.miR system has the ability to quantitatively measure multiple specific exosomal miRNAs as low concentrations as 1 pM in the original clinical plasma samples with low error, which provides a more efficient and accurate way than current clinical biomarkers detection methods in one single assay. 

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: The multiplexing capability of MIX.miR, based on its multi-sensor capillary and scalable multisensory board, has allowed us to interrogate a large panel of candidate miRNAs for Acute Myocardial Infarction. Additionally, the relative low cost and portability of the developed MIX.miR sensor demonstrates great potential as a rapid, specific miRNA screening tool in both clinical settings and developing countries. 

MedicalResearch.com: What else might the technology be used for?

Response: The MIX.miR sensor platform can be used for detection of other miRNA-based biomarkers for diagnosis of other diseases such as cancer or other cardiovascular diseases. The board we demonstrated in this work can be scaled up and further miniaturized into a portable detection device for point of care diagnostics. 

Citations:

Xiang Ren, Bradley W. Ellis, George Ronan, Stuart Ryan Blood, Cameron DeShetler, Satyajyoti Senapati, Keith L. March, Eileen Handberg, David Anderson, Carl Pepine, Hsueh-Chia Chang, Pinar Zorlutuna. A multiplexed ion-exchange membrane-based miRNA (MIX·miR) detection platform for rapid diagnosis of myocardial infarction. Lab on a Chip, 2021; DOI: 10.1039/D1LC00685A 

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Last Updated on October 5, 2021 by Marie Benz MD FAAD