Smart Contact Lenses Developed for Cancer Diagnostics

Medical Design Briefs INSIDER

The lens was designed with microchambers bound to antibodies that can capture exosomes found in tears. (Credit: Terasaki Institute)

Scientists have developed a contact lens that can capture and detect exosomes, nanometer-sized vesicles found in bodily secretions that have the potential for being diagnostic cancer biomarkers. The lens was designed with microchambers bound to antibodies that can capture exosomes found in tears.

This antibody-conjugated signaling microchamber contact lens (ABSM-CL) can be stained for detection with nanoparticle-tagged specific antibodies for selective visualization. This offers a potential platform for cancer pre-screening and a supportive diagnostic tool that is easy, rapid, sensitive, cost-effective, and noninvasive.

The team leveraged their expertise in contact lens biosensor design and fabrication to eliminate the need for these isolation methods by devising their ABSM-CL for capturing exosomes from tears, an optimum and cleaner source of exosomes than blood, urine, and saliva.

They also facilitated and optimized the preparation of their ABSM-CL by the use of alternative approaches. When fabricating the microchambers for their lens, the team used a direct laser cutting and engraving approach rather than conventional cast molding for structural retention of both the chambers and the lens.

In addition, the team introduced a method that chemically modified the microchamber surfaces to activate them for antibody binding. This method was used in place of standard approaches, in which metallic or nanocarbon materials must be used in expensive cleanroom settings.

In an initial validation experiment, the ABSM-CL was tested against exosomes secreted into supernatants from ten different tissue and cancer cell lines. The ability to capture and detect exosomes was validated by the spectroscopic shifts observed in all the test samples, in comparison with the negative controls. Similar results were obtained when the ABSM-CL was tested against 10 different tear samples collected from volunteers.

In final experiments, exosomes in supernatants collected from three different cell lines with different surface marker expressions were tested against the ABSM-CL, along with different combinations of marker-specific detection antibodies. The resultant patterns of detection and non-detection of exosomes from the three different cell lines were as expected, thus validating the lens’ ability to accurately capture and detect exosomes with different surface markers.

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