STAMP and APEX Technologies

Patients can Look Forward to More Accurate and Less Invasive Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Tests

The STAMP technology was invented by Asst Prof Shao Huilin (left), doctoral student Noah Sundah (right) and their team at the NUS iHealthtech. A ssistant Professor Shao Huilin from the NUS Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech) and her teams spent two years to develop STAMP (SequenceTopology Assembly for Multiplexed Profiling) and APEX (Amplified Plasmonic Exosome) respectively. While STAMP enables accurate cancer cell detection and determination of disease aggressiveness from the least invasive biopsies, APEX empower doctors to potentially diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and monitor a patient’s response to treatment through a simple blood test.

The STAMP Technology

Comprehensive analysis of protein expression and distribution holds promise for discovery of biomarkers, early disease detection, and rationalisation of treatment options. However, current approaches involve imaging and microscopy techniques which are complex, timeconsuming and with limited multiplexing capability.

Through leveraging DNA’s large information storing capacity and its programmability to fold and unfold into different structures, the STAMP technology can not only measure billions of protein markers from a small clinical sample in a single test, but also identify the specific locations of these protein markers in cells. The mapping of these marker distribution patterns in cells can provide an early indication of disease aggressiveness.

In addition, the STAMP technology can provide highly informative analysis from scarce samples, be completed in as little as two hours and is

Asst Prof Shao Huilin (left) and her team developed APEX, a highly sensitive blood test for early Alzheimer’s disease, even before clinical symptoms appear.

a million times more sensitive compared to current pathology techniques which only measure a small subset of protein markers and require several days of extensive processing. Furthermore, its accuracy is the same as pathology analysis of surgical tissues.

This technology breakthrough was published by the scientific journal “Nature Biomedical Engineering” in its “News & Views” column in July and selected as the cover story for its September 2019 issue. A provisional patent has been filed for STAMP.

Moving forward, the team will expand the applications of STAMP to other types of cancer, such as brain, lung and gastric cancer, as well as validate the technology in other samples such as blood and ascites.

The APEX System

Due to the complex and progressive nature of Alzheimer’s disease, early detection and intervention can improve the success of disease modifying therapies. However, current Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and monitoring are often subjective and the disease tends to be detected only at a late stage. Meanwhile, alternatives such as positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and cerebrospinal fluid tests are too expensive for wide clinical adoption or require lumbar punctures.

The invention by the NUS Engineering team provides a solution to effectively pick up an early-stage molecular marker of Alzheimer’s disease – the aggregated amyloid beta (Aβ). The recognition of abnormal Aβ aggregates from a very small amount of blood induces and amplifies a colour change in the associated light signal of the APEX sensor.

Highly sensitive and provides an accurate diagnosis – comparable to PET imaging – at less than one percent of the cost of PET imaging, The APEX system could potentially diagnose Alzheimer’s disease even before clinical symptoms appear. Additionally, the current design can test 60 samples simultaneously and provide results in less than an hour. Simple to use in clinical settings, APEX can not only be used to monitor a patient’s response to treatment, but also scaled up for large cohort clinical validations and drug evaluation.

The team published its research findings in scientific journal “Nature Communications” and featured as an Editors’ Choice by the journal.

In the next phase of research, the team hopes to deploy the technology to areas of Alzheimer’s disease management, and the evaluation of Alzheimer’s disease therapeutics under development.

Commercialisation Plans

Asst Prof Shao and her team are currently in discussions with industry partners to further develop and commercialise both the STAMP technology and the APEX system. Both technologies are expected to reach the market within the next five years.