Accurate diagnosis of prostate cancer with CRISPR-based nucleic acid test strip by simultaneously identifying PCA3 and KLK3 genes

Although serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing could decrease the morality of prostate cancer (PCa), its low specificity usually led to misdiagnosis due to prostatitis or benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) as an alternative prostate tumor-specificity biomarker could be used to increase the specificity of PCa diagnosis, however, it usually required sophisticated operation and expensive equipment for routine detection. Herein, we constructed an early detection platform for prostate cancer with reverse transcriptase-recombinase aided amplification (RT-RAA) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 based nucleic acid test strip. The amplicons of PCA3 and kallikrein related peptidase 3 (KLK3) gene, which amplified simultaneously by single-amplification unit of RT-RAA were specifically recognized by Cas9-sgRNA and visual on the nucleic acid test strip by naked eyes without instruments. Simultaneously detection of PCA3 and KLK3 gene could improve specificity and accuracy of the diagnosis but avoid mutual interference. In addition, the platform presented a detection limit of 500 fg/mu L and 50 fg/mu L in PCA3 and KLK3 gene, respec-tively. Furthermore, the analysis result of signal ratio of PCA3 to KLK3 gene of urine and peripheral blood specimens from 32 men with suspected prostate cancer on test strips illustrated that the area under the curve values of urine and peripheral blood specimens were 0.998 and 1.0 respectively. In summary, our study high-lighted a facile strategy to design an accurate prostate cancer gene detection platform which had the potential to conduct prostate cancer early detection in the resource-limited or other point-of-care testing (POCT) environments.

Automated summary

Researchers developed an early detection platform for prostate cancer using RT-RAA and CRISPR-Cas9 technologies. They detected PCA3 and KLK3 genes simultaneously on nucleic acid test strips, improving the specificity and accuracy of diagnosis without the need for instruments. This study provides a simple strategy for prostate cancer early detection in resource-limited or other point-of-care testing environments.