Emerging technologies for salivaomics in cancer detection

Abstract

Salivary diagnostics has great potential to be used in the early detection and prevention of many cancerous diseases. If implemented with rigour and efficiency, it can result in improving patient survival times and achieving earlier diagnosis of disease. Recently, extraordinary efforts have been taken to develop non-invasive technologies that can be applied without complicated and expensive procedures. Saliva is a biofluid that has demonstrated excellent properties and can be used as a diagnostic fluid, since many of the biomarkers suggested for cancers can also be found in whole saliva, apart from blood or other body fluids. The currently accepted gold standard methods for biomarker development include chromatography, mass spectometry, gel electrophoresis, microarrays and polymerase chain reaction-based quantification. However, salivary diagnostics is a flourishing field with the rapid development of novel technologies associated with point-of-care diagnostics, RNA sequencing, electrochemical detection and liquid biopsy. Those technologies will help introduce population-based screening programs, thus enabling early detection, prognosis assessment and disease monitoring. The purpose of this review is to give a comprehensive update on the emerging diagnostic technologies and tools for the early detection of cancerous diseases based on saliva.

Keywords: RNA-Sequencing; cancer; liquid biopsy; point-of-care; salivary diagnostics.

Figure 1

The diagram shows the separation mechanism of selected cells in body fluids by means of ‘magnetic beads’ coated with monoclonal bodies (in vivo).

Figure 2

Diagram of magnetic separation of selected components of body fluids using super‐paramagnetic elements (i.e. magnetic beads) (ex vivo).

Figure 3

Electric field–induced release and measurement (EFIRM) technology for the detection of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations in bodily fluids of patients with lung cancer (Reproduction from 84).

Figure 4

Electric field–induced release and measurement (EFIRM) technology. Following the incubation of the target sequence to the capture probe, a detector probe that is also complementary to the ctDNA is hybridized. The FITC located on the terminal end of the detector probe is then complexed to an anti‐FITC antibody with horseradish peroxidase (HRP).