Ultrasensitive Quantification of Oncoprotein CREPT Using Quartz Crystal Microbalance Sensor

A novel and ultrasensitive strategy to detect protein CREPT (Cell Regulated and Expression-evaluated Protein in Tumor) in cancer cells using quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor is developed in this study. CREPT is an oncoprotein and plays vital roles in cancer initiation, growth and metastasis via mediating oncogene transcription, and the content of CREPT can reflect the degree of carcinogenesis of tissues and organs. However, there is no rapid, low-cost and ultrasensitive procedure for the quantitative detection of CREPT content in cancer tissues. In order to solve this critical problem, we established a swift and ultrasensitive QCM detection system that achieves an inexpensive and quantitative detection of CREPT. The experimental results showed that CREPT is upregulated in cancers and the weight of CREPT in 1μL extraction of colorectal cells was 0.180064mg. Our work suggests that QCM enables rapid and efficient quantification of proteins and holds promise to apply to quantitative diagnosis and accurate prediction of the degree of canceration of human organs.