A Potential Nanosensing Method for Early Diagnosis of Endometrial Cancer with Sialic Acid Biomarker

Studies have shown that sialic acid is a potential biomarker that is related to diseases and cancers, including gynecological cancers. Gynecological cancers (GCs) are difficult to diagnose because of its complicated diagnosis process and the many different forms. This is a major threat to women's health. Endometrial cancer (EC) is a type of GCs with the third highest mortality rate among women. It is important to diagnose it at its early stage, so as to allow the patients to be completely treated. Our primary research was to use silver nanoparticles to demonstrate Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) as a nano-sensing method of measuring sialic acid concentration in biological fluids. Our experiments created its concentration calibration curve, and established a threshold of 0.47mg/mL for the possible early diagnosis of the EC. The SERS nano-sensing method is extremely sensitive. In our experiments it shows enhancement even at the lowest concentration of 0.015 mg/ml for the sialic acid. This study plays a significant role in the development of early diagnostic methods for EC, so as to save women's lives in the world.