From left, Lee Min-young, senior researcher at the Advanced Bio and Healthcare Materials Research Division at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), and Park Sung-kyu, director of the Global Top Research Consortium at the institute / Courtesy of KIMS A research team at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS) has developed a plasmonics-based liquid biopsy platform capable of detecting cancer-related gene mutations in the blood and urine of patients with early-stage colorectal cancer, paving the way for less invasive cancer diagnosis, KIMS said Wednesday.
The research team, led by Lee Min-young, senior researcher at the Advanced Bio and Healthcare Materials Research Division, and Park Sung-kyu, director of the Global Top Research Consortium, developed a new testing platform capable of detecting KRAS mutations, a key genetic driver of colorectal cancer, with very high sensitivity.
To test the technology, the researchers analyzed tumor tissue as well as matching blood and urine samples from patients with stage 0 and stage 1 colorectal cancer.
The results showed more than 90 percent agreement across the different sample types, suggesting that the method could serve as a reliable alternative to conventional tissue biopsies.
