Plasma and saliva-derived circulating epigenetic biomarkers for early type 2 diabetes diagnosis

Special focus and aim of our research activities at AIT, the Austrian Institute of Technology, is to define reliable biomarkers suitable for early and non- or minimal-invasive disease diagnosis from body fluids such as serum/plasma and saliva. We concentrate a significant part of our research on epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation and miRNA, which play an important role in gene regulation and have been found to be altered in human diseases as well as already manifest in early states of diseases.

Along these lines we have built up specific expertise in high-throughput and multiplex biomarker technologies which we particularly used in the last years for the successful discovery and validation of DNA methylation-based diagnostic marker panels for the big 4 cancer entities in serum or plasma. However, each blood withdrawal holds potential risks like e.g. danger of infection and can only be performed by a specially trained person. Biomarker analysis in saliva, being an ultrafiltrate of blood, should therefore be a potential simple, safe and non-invasive alternative for the future. Therefore, our current special interest is saliva diagnostics and to investigate saliva for its suitability for circulating biomarker-based diagnostics.

Here we will present proof of concept studies on DNA-methylation-based biomarkers where we could successfully show the feasibility of using saliva as a diagnostic matrix. We will further report on the evaluation of different commercially available strategies for isolation of exosomes and present data from comparative profiling studies in salivary- and serum-derived exosomes including genome-wide microRNA as well as DNA-methylation profiling. Last but not least we will report on first results of a research project where we are looking for salivary and plasma exosome-derived epigenetic biomarkers (DNA-methylation and microRNA) for early type 2 diabetes diagnosis.