Nanochannel electrical immunosensor for cancer stem cell proteomic biomarker based classification of breast cancer

A nanochannel based sensor for classification of breast cancer has been designed. The nanochannel sensor is an electrochemical immunoassay and comprises of alumina nanochannel arrays integrated on to a gold microelectronic platform. The sensor operates on the principle of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Our approach to classification of breast cancer is based on screening for levels of expression of specific proteomic biomarkers associated with breast cancer stem cells. Proteomic activity for two breast cancer cell lines for two specific markers (ALDH1A1 and pan-cytokeratin) was quantified. Test cell lysate samples from benign and metastatic cancer tissues were tested and quantified for cancer stem cell marker activity. The lowest proteomic activity measured with (a) ALDH1A1 was 10 pg/mL and (b) pan-cytokeratin was 10 pg/mL correlating to the detection of unit stem cell count.