Prostate and Lung Cancer Detection by Using Niox Nanolayer on Chemical Etched Si Nanowire Field Effect Transistor

A point of care (POC) miniaturized chip is required to diagnose the major death causing cancers at early stages. Besides our ongoing project on breast cancer (LOXL2) detection (MOST-104-2221-E-182-075), it is important to detect early stage of both prostate and lung cancers where a new proposed method will give long life of patient. Despite major advancements, prostate and lung cancers are the leading cause for the high mortality rate due to absence of noticeable symptoms at early stages. For clinical diagnosis of prostate cancer, Prostate specific antigen (PSA) screening from blood test suspects the prostate cancer which further confirmed by digital rectal examination (DRE), trans rectal ultrasound (TRUS) and biopsy. PSA can be misleading as the various clinical conditions affect the PSA level in blood. In order to screen the prostate cancer at primary stages, we are proposing two novel approaches to fabricate POC biosensor system. Our First approach is to fabricate the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) sensitive nickel oxide (NiOx) nanolayer based electrolyte-insulator-semiconductor (EIS) sensor fabrication to detect sarcosine from urine as sarcosine have characteristics to oxidize in presence of sarcosine oxidase. Basically, the proposed method is to generate H2O2 from sarcosine and to detect amount of H2O2 as well as prostate cancer. In the second approach, we propose to fabricate the nickel oxide passivated Si nanowire based immune-FET to detect PSA at lower concentration with higher sensitivity. In similar fashion, lung cancer diagnosis relies on clinical laboratory examination with X-ray, computed tomography (CT scan), bronchoscopy and sputum cytology which increase the cost and need to be evaluated by professionals. We proposing a nickel passivated silicon nanowire immuno-FET based POC system for carcinogen embryonic antigen (CEA) biomarker detection. The antigen- antibody immune reaction is expected to vary the surface potential and conductivity of Si nanowire which can be optimized for the estimation of CEA concentration in the blood sample. The high surface area of Si nanowire is believed to detect the low concentration of PSA and CEA for early diagnosis of prostate and lung cancers, respectively. First year: Design and fabrication of NiOx nanolayer EIS sensor 1. NiOx/SiO2/Si based EIS sensor fabrication 2. Optimization of NiOx thickness and oxygen content 3. Si nanowire (SiNW) growth by chemical etching method 4. SiNW length and diameter optimization 5. H2O2 detection and optimization using EIS structure 6. Understanding sensing mechanism in depth 7. Sarcosine oxidase enzyme immobilization and optimization for maximum activity 8. In-vitro sarcosine detection with EIS sensor Second year: Design and fabricate the NiOx/SiNW ISFET Optimize I-V characteristics for H2O2 sensing (〜1 |jM) Sarcosine oxidase immobilization over NiOx surface In-vitro sarcosine detection with NiOx/SiNW ISFET Low amount sarcosine detection with ISFET sensor (〜100 Low amount of lung cancer detection by Immuno FET(〜100 Third year: 1. Low amount detection of sarcosine (1 nM) 2. Immobilize the PSA antibody over NiOx surface 3. Optimize high sensitivity for PSA detection and avoid interference 4. Clinical test for PSA detection in patient serum 5. Immobilize the CEA antibody over NiOx surface with a low amount of detection (1 nM) 6. Characterize the sensitivity by conductance measurement 7. Optimize high sensitivity for PSA detection and avoid interference 8. Clinical test for PSA detection in patient serum 9. Design a portable module of prostate and lung cancer detection with low cost for real application

Project ID:PB10507-2965
External Project ID:MOST105-2221-E182-002