Ultrabright fluorescent mesoporous silica nanoparticles for prescreening of cervical cancer.

We report on the first functional use of recently introduced ultrabright fluorescent mesoporous silica nanoparticles, which are functionalized with folic acid, to distinguish cancerous and precancerous cervical epithelial cells from normal cells. The high brightness of the particles is advantageous for fast and reliable identification of both precancerous and cancerous cells. Normal and cancer cells were isolated from three healthy women and three cancer patients. Three precancerous cell lines were derived by immortalization of primary cultures of normal cells with human papillomavirus type-16 (HPV-16) DNA. We observed substantially different particle internalization by normal and cancerous/precancerous cells after a short incubation time of 15 minutes. Compared to HPV-DNA and cell pathology tests, which are currently used for prescreening of cervical cancer, we demonstrated that the specificity of our method was similar (94-95%), whereas its sensitivity was significantly better (95-97%) than the sensitivity of those currently used tests (30-80%). FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR: This team of investigators reports on the development of a new screening test for cervical cancer using ultrabright fluorescent mesoporous silica nanoparticles functionalized with folic acid, enabling significantly better sensitivity (95-97% vs. 30-80%) and maintained specificity (94-95%) compared with current clinical tests. This test should find a way to clinical use in the near future.