An SPRi Biosensor for Determination of the Ovarian Cancer Marker HE4 in Human Plasma

Abstract

Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) is an ovarian cancer marker. Various cut-off values of the marker in blood are recommended, depending on the method used for its determination. An alternative biosensor for HE4 determination in blood plasma has been developed. It consists of rabbit polyclonal antibody against HE4, covalently attached to a gold chip via cysteamine linker. The biosensor is used with the non-fluidic array SPRi technique. The linear range of the analytical signal response was found to be 2–120 pM, and the biosensor can be used for the determination of the HE4 marker in the plasma of both healthy subjects and ovarian cancer patients after suitable dilution with a PBS buffer. Precision (6–10%) and recovery (101.8–103.5%) were found to be acceptable, and the LOD was equal to 2 pM. The biosensor was validated by the parallel determination of a series of plasma samples from ovarian cancer patients using the Elecsys HE4 test and the developed biosensor, with a good agreement of the results (a Pearson coefficient of 0.989). An example of the diagnostic application of the developed biosensor is given—the influence of ovarian tumor resection on the level of HE4 in blood serum.