Investigating the Viability of a Carbon Nanotube Surface as a Gastric Cancer Screening Tool

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Date

2020

Authors

McAllister, Bri Elise

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of Oregon

Abstract

Gastric cancer is a type of cancer that affects the stomach, esophagus, and duodenum. According to the American Cancer society, there were an estimated 27,510 diagnosed cases in the US, 2019 (American Cancer Society, 2019). Although this value only represents about 1.8% of all cancer sites in 2019, there was a low 40.5% survival rate of those diagnosed. Its presence is often asymptomatic until reaching advanced stages of the disease. When symptoms of indigestion, nonspecific stomach pain, anorexia, weight loss or early satiety are expressed, it’s easy to confuse the cause with other ailments. By the time they were officially diagnosed, around 50% of patients’ cancer had progressed beyond the locoregional area. Of those who had the disease in the locoregional area, only 50% could have a curative removal of the diseased tissue3. Current diagnostic techniques for gastric cancer include endoscopy and a barium swallow study. Endoscopy is a highly invasive and costly procedure used to investigate suspicious gastric, esophageal and duodenal lesions. Any sample that appears suspicious is biopsied and examined, and often has a 70% sensitivity for diagnosing the existing cancer. If there are six additional biopsies from the margin and base of the initial sample, sensitivity jumps to 98% (Graham, DY, 1982). A barium swallow study is an imaging technique using barium and x-rays to image the upper gastrointestinal tract. This image allows for potential identification of malignant ulcers and lesions in the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum. Any abnormal findings require a follow up endoscopic examination. In comparison to endoscopy, a barium study is significantly less invasive. However, this test tends to produce up to 50% false negatives in various cases (Dooley, CP, 1984). The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness in gastric cancer cell capture rate in a single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) forest substrate. To test the differences in gastric cancer capture rate, we patterned a silicon oxide substrate with a checkerboard carbon nanotube surface using photolithography and chemical vapor deposition. We seeded cell lines AGS (ATCC: CRL-1739) and KATO III (ATCC: HTB 103) onto this surface in decreasing densities and counted the overall capture rate on both silicon oxide and CNT squares. Our results indicated no significant difference in KATO III capture rate and significance in two densities of AGS. Overall, the results indicate that there may be preferential entrapment at a specific density range for fully adherent gastric cancer cells and that this experiment should be repeated to test if these results are replicable.

Description

32 pages

Keywords

Biophysics, Biology, Nanomaterials, Gastric cancer, Nanotube, barium study, Endoscopy

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