Accurate and Convenient Lung Cancer Diagnosis through Detection of Extracellular Vesicle Membrane Proteins via Förster Resonance Energy Transfer

Tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) are promising to monitor early stage cancer. Unfortunately, isolating and analyzing EVs from a patient’s liquid biopsy are challenging. For this, we devised an EV membrane proteins detection system (EV-MPDS) based on Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) signals between aptamer quantum dots and AIEgen dye, which eliminated the EV extraction and purification to conveniently diagnose lung cancer. In a cohort of 80 clinical samples, this system showed enhanced accuracy (100% versus 65%) and sensitivity (100% versus 55%) in cancer diagnosis as compared to the ELISA detection method. Improved accuracy of early screening (from 96.4% to 100%) was achieved by comprehensively profiling five biomarkers using a machine learning analysis system. FRET-based tumor EV-MPDS is thus an isolation-free, low-volume (1 μL), and highly accurate approach, providing the potential to aid lung cancer diagnosis and early screening.