BioCentury
ARTICLE | Preclinical News

Synthetic tattoo could detect asymptomatic cancer

April 19, 2018 10:47 PM UTC

A team from ETH Zurich developed a synthetic cellular sensor that darkens a patient's skin in the presence of hypercalcemia -- a disorder associated with many cancers that often arises before signs of cancer -- and thereby could serve as an early detector for asymptomatic cancer onset or recurrence.

In the paper published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers engineered human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells to express the biosensor calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) and a chimeric calcium-sensitive promoter linked to transgenic tyrosinase (TYR; OCA1). When the sensor system detects elevated calcium levels in blood indicative of hypercalcemia, a synthetic signaling cascade leads to TYR expression, which in turn synthesizes the black pigment melanin. The resulting accumulation of melanin produces a visible tattoo, enabling detection of hypercalcemia associated with asymptomatic cancer...