Authors: Garrett Johnson, Tyler Free, Brad Bundy
Mentors: Brad Bundy
Insitution: Brigham Young University
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is the most common form of childhood cancer. Asparaginase treatment has greatly improved survival rates to 80%. Survival rates increase by an additional 10% when diagnostic treatment monitoring is used to guide treatment administration. Cell-free protein synthesis is a technology capable of detecting Asparaginase in human serum. However, RNases from human samples destroy CFPS activity. RNase inhibitor can be produced at a low cost by the CFPS system to rescue in-vitro protein synthesis activity to enable biosensing. This work reports our work toward developing an at home Asparaginase diagnostic that would enable personalized dosing of Asparaginase and further improve survival rates of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.