SYDNEY, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Researchers in Australia have developed a rapid, low-cost saliva diagnostic tool that could enable early screening for several common cancers.
The team at Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has developed a simple one-hour saliva test for a protein biomarker called S100P that has been linked with oral, colon, prostate, and pancreatic cancers, a QUT statement said Wednesday.
Researchers developed a rapid testing technique of saliva using paper coated in gold and silver nanoparticles to create a highly sensitive sensor that records the Raman spectrum -- the process by which a substance scatters laser light which is used to identify molecules -- of saliva samples.
"The protein S100P is one of the biomarkers investigated for cancer diagnosis and has been detected in ovarian, prostate, gastric, colorectal and breast cancers," said Associate Professor Emad Kiriakous from QUT's School of Chemistry and Physics.
"This method could shorten diagnosis time to minutes instead of hours or days and uses low-cost and portable materials," said Kiriakous, corresponding author of the study published in the journal Talanta. ■
