Electrochemical telomerase assay for oral cancer screening

Telomerase has long been known as a cancer marker. As an easy-to-perform oral cancer screening system, we established a new electrochemical telomerase assay (ECTA) method that is superior to a telomerase repeat amplification protocol assay, a popular method for detection of telomerase activity. In the present study, we employed 3 types of clinical samples to examine the sensitivity and specificity of ECTA. Three types of samples were obtained from 44 oral squamous cell carcinoma patients and 16 healthy volunteers; exfoliated cells from the whole oral cavity, exfoliated cells from local lesions, and tissue samples from lesions. Telomerase activity was determined in the samples using ECTA. The increase in current in the oral cancer group was significantly higher than that in the healthy volunteer group for each sample type, while there were no significant differences among the 3 sample types in the oral cancer group. The sensitivity and specificity of ECTA was 94.6% and 88.6%, respectively. Our novel ECTA method showed excellent detection of telomerase activity and is consider applicable as an oral cancer screening system.