Response Monitoring of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Patients Undergoing l-Asparaginase Therapy: Successes and Challenges Associated with Clinical Sample Analysis in Plasmonic Sensing

Abstract

Monitoring the response of patients undergoing chemotherapeutic treatments is of great importance to predict remission success, avoid adverse effects and thus, maximize the patients’ quality of life. In the case of leukemia patients treated with E. coli l-asparaginase, monitoring the immune response by the detection of specific antibodies to l-asparaginase in the serum of patients can prevent extended immune response to the drug. Here, we developed a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor to rapidly detect anti-asparaginase antibodies directly in patients’ sera, without requiring sample pretreatment or dilution. A direct assay with SPR sensing to detect anti-asparaginase antibodies exhibited a limit of detection of 500 pM and a high sensitivity range between 100 nM and 1 μM in pooled and undiluted human serum from a commercial source. While the SPR assay showed excellent reproducibility (12% RSD) in pooled serum, challenges were encountered upon analyzing clinical samples due to high sample-to-sample v...