An integrated microfluidic platform for detection of ovarian clear cell carcinoma mRNA biomarker FXYD2.

In this work we developed an integrated microfluidic system for automatically detecting the ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) biomarker FXYD2. Capture of cancer cells, isolation of messenger RNA, and quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction were carried out on-chip automatically. OCCC is a subtype of ovarian cancer with a high mortality risk and high FXYD2 gene expression level was shown to be closely associated with OCCC. The lowest concentration of quantification using this system could be as low as 100 copies per sample. By normalizing expression to a house-keeping gene, GAPDH, a simple cycle threshold ratio index could distinguish high FXYD2 expression cells from low-expression ones. This developed platform may therefore facilitate future OCCC diagnosis and/or prognosis.