AiPBAND: An Integrated Platform for Developing Brain Cancer Diagnostic Techniques Erik Samuelsson, Early Stage Researcher, AiPBAND, Stockholm University, Sweden
Meet the AiPBAND Early Stage Researchers In the following section, we’ll have the opportunity to hear from some of the AiPBAND students about their individual projects. An Integrated Platform for Developing Brain Cancer Diagnostic Techniques (AiPBAND) is a research program training a new generation of entrepreneurial and innovative early-stage researchers (ESRs) to develop new biosensing techniques and diagnostic systems for the early diagnosis of brain tumors using molecular biomarkers in the blood. The project is approaching completion, and we are pleased to bring you an update from the ESRs to review what they have accomplished during this project. AiPBAND has focused on gliomas, a category of devastating and progressive brain tumors affecting around 25,000 people each year in Europe and responsible for the majority of deaths from primary brain tumors. Despite extensive study in the field, to date there are no clinically validated biomarkers for reliable diagnosis and grading of glioma. The research objective of AiPBAND is to work to solve this problem, using stateof-the-art technologies to identify novel biomarkers from patients with gliomas, design multiplex biosensors for the detection of these biomarkers, to evaluate these systems through proof-of-concept through preclinical studies, and to study how biomarkers correlate to tumor development. Each student participating in the AiPBAND initiative has taken on an individual research project, and worked to set its aim and objectives toward the common goal of improving the diagnostic prospects and our understanding of GBM.
Mina Safarzadeh: Mina is from Iran and was hosted as an ESR at the University of Plymouth in the UK. Her project has been to develop graphene-based biosensors for the detection of methylated DNA. Toward that end, she has developed two biosensors with wide dynamic ranges and high selectivity. Both of these sensors can be tailor-made to detect other methylated DNA sequences. One of these biosensors was shown to detect a single strand methylated DNA in the femtomolar range (having a concentration of 10-15 moles per litre) and the other detected double strand methylated DNA in the picomolar range (having a concentration of one picomole per litre). Preclinical studies were conducted in plasma for one of these sensors and the sensitivity was shown to be high.
Vanessa Jungbluth: Vanessa is originally from Germany and was hosted as an ESR and PhD Student by the University of Catania in Sicily, Italy. Since her early career, she has been working on improving and simplifying medical diagnosis for patients. During her previous work for Philips Handheld Diagnostics and the Austrian Institute of Technology, she worked on different methods for a fast and reliable diagnosis of various medical conditions such as heart attacks, influenza infections or colon cancer. During her PhD, Vanessa worked to improve the diagnosis of brain tumors. Usually, such tumors are detected using an invasive biopsy. She showed that it is also possible to diagnose brain tumors by using a biosensor to detect little disease-specific molecules (called microRNAs) circulating in the blood stream of patients. Such an analytical device requires only a small blood sample and thus makes the diagnostic procedure easier, faster and less harmful to the patient. Today Vanessa is working for a company that develops a novel instrument used for various diagnostics tests, still following her goal to make medical diagnosis easier. ➤ Brain Tumour
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