A portable breast cancer diagnosis kit based on CRISPR-Cas technology

Breast cancer has become the most common cancer in the world with the highest mortality in female cancers in 2020. Early diagnosis of breast cancer and individualized optimization of treatment strategies can greatly improve survival. Our project offers a sensitive, cheap, noninvasive, and widely applicable alternative way of sensing circRNA biomarkers for breast cancer. Our detection tool combines a CRISPR-Cas12a technology with a cell-free system to identify two circRNA biomarkers, hsa_circ_0001785 and hsa_circ_0001982, for the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer patients, respectively. The detection is sensitive for minimally invasive samples like blood and can be further extended to other circRNA biomarkers with ease. We aim to reduce the mortality rate of devastating diseases by providing a convenient method to screen them early.