Highly Sensitive Gold Nanoparticle Polymerase Chain Reaction in the Detection of Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase-Positive Gastric Cancer from a Biopsy Specimen

Abstract

Gastric cancer is a malignant tumor that is originated from the epithelia of the gastric mucosa. Although the gastroscopic biopsy of suspicious gastric areas can provide better early-warning opportunities for patients with malignant tumors that result in achieving early diagnosis and treatment, many malignant tumors are still excluded due to atypical histology, sampling errors, nonspecific antibodies, and other reasons, which pose a threat to the physical and mental health of patients. Therefore, more sensitive and specific detection methods of gastric cancer are needed to improve the screening efficiency of gastroscopic biopsy. The sensitivity of nano PCR was 10 times higher than that of conventional PCR. In comparison with the conventional RT-PCR method, nano PCR technology can amplify brighter bands and identify higher gene expression levels for ALK weak positive gastric cancer in IHC, and improve the detection rate of clinical specimens with lower ALK staining. Therefore, nano-gold polymerase chain reaction used gold nanoparticle (nano-gold PCR) has high sensitivity and positive detection rate for ALK-positive gastric cancer identified by gastroscopy. When a low concentration was observed for the amplified gene, especially when the biopsy tissue was too small to carry out IHC staining, the target gene could be amplified more effectively. Therefore, nano PCR technology is proposed to be widely used in target gene detection of biopsy tissue to achieve better tumor screening.