Early diagnosis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma by signal-enhanced lateral flow immunoassay: SELFI

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a relatively low incidence but a high mortality rate, primarily due to difficulties in early detection. Current state-of-the-art methods for diagnosing early-stage PDAC tend to be invasive, time-consuming, and unreliable, primarily due to the difficulties associated with the early detection of pancreatic cancers. Here we show a quick and sensitive method for the early diagnosis of PDAC using a signal-enhanced lateral flow immunoassay called SELFI. We develop SELFI, which generates a strong colorimetric signal through multiple hotspots formed by plasmonic gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) assembled on a silica nanoparticle. Our SELFI assay achieves a 10,123-fold increase in the limit of detection compared to conventional lateral flow immunoassays using 20 nm AuNPs, providing results within 15 min. We demonstrate that SELFI enables early diagnosis of PDAC, as indicated by a receiver operating characteristic curve and a larger area under the curve compared to the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. SELFI's effective diagnostic features can enhance the timely identification of PDAC and may also serve in the early diagnosis of a range of other diseases.