hYKL-40 cancer biomarker electroanalysis in serum samples and model cell lysates: capacitive immunosensing compared with enzyme label immunosorbent assays (ELISA)

Human chitinase 3-like protein 1 (CHI3L1 or hYKL-40), a potential molecular marker for several cancers, was measured in clinical human serum samples and model cell lysates by indirect and competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and by capacitive immunosensing, so as to evaluate a recently introduced electrochemical method for routine use in cancer-monitoring studies. The clinical samples tested included serum from four healthy individuals, five breast cancer and four glioblastoma patients; cultures of the human monocytic cell line THP-1, known to secrete hYKL-40, and of the human embryonic kidney 293t cell line, which does not express hYKL-40, provided cell lysates and cell culture media for positive and negative bio- and electrochemical control trials. A good agreement was observed between the results of the three tested methods during hYKL-40 quantifications in human serum and cell lysates. Measurements of ‘spiked’ samples from healthy volunteers, cancer patients and hYKL-40-free 293t cell lysates revealed that capacitive immunosensing and the two types of ELISA all recovered the analyte with an efficiency close to 100%. On this basis, capacitive hYKL-40 immunosensor screening is a promising stand-alone or complementary analytical tool for the analysis of hYKL-40 in serum, and would be useful for the validation of standard ELISA data and also, because of the significantly lower hYKL-40 detection limit of the electroanalytical procedure, would permit assay of the marker and cancer observation at earlier stages than is currently possible using ELISA.