A Cambridge-designed urine test built to monitor lung cancer may also spot pulmonary fibrosis years before symptoms appear, researchers announced last week.
The nanoprobe, called ALBANC, was originally engineered to track chemical signals from “zombie cells” — senescent cells that stop dividing but remain biologically active and are tied to both cancer and age-related diseases. Professor Ljiljana Fruk, of Cambridge’s BioNano Engineering research group, said the appeal lies in making the invisible measurable.
“This approach allows us to follow senescence-associated activity in a way that is non-invasive and repeatable,” she said. “The fact that it may also be relevant to other conditions we did not originally set out to study makes the direction of research particularly encouraging.”
The surprise finding, published in Nature Aging, centers on an enzyme called MMP-7. Researchers identified it as the key marker linking senescence-linked activity in both lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive lung-scarring condition that is often irreversible and notoriously difficult to catch early. When MMP-7 activity runs high in diseased tissue, a peptide link in the nanoprobe snaps, releasing fragments small enough for kidneys to filter into urine, where they trigger a measurable color change.
To sharpen detection, the team added an amplification step that boosts the signal roughly 250-fold compared to standard methods, according to the University of Cambridge. That sensitivity allows repeated testing without biopsies or scans, giving doctors a way to track disease activity between imaging appointments.
Professor Daniel Muñoz-Espín, of Cambridge’s Early Cancer Institute, said the pulmonary fibrosis angle matters because so few early-detection tools exist for that condition.
“A non-invasive way to track disease-related biology over time could be valuable in patients at higher risk, including those with underlying lung conditions, environmental exposures or other known risk factors,” he said.
The researchers stress that ALBANC does not detect cancer directly. It is designed to complement existing diagnostics, particularly for monitoring how lung cancer patients respond to treatment and whether their disease returns. The pulmonary fibrosis application emerged unexpectedly from that original purpose.
Professor Robert Rintoul, co-lead for the CRUK Cambridge Centre Thoracic Cancer Programme, said the work is advancing toward human trials. “This work forms the basis for testing within clinical trials with a view to future use in the clinic,” he said.
The study extends the same team’s earlier research this year into how chemotherapy can trigger “zombie cells” that help tumors resist treatment and return. The next phase will test how reliably ALBANC performs in human patients, and whether one urine sample could eventually track both cancer treatment response and fibrotic lung disease.