The pH low insertion peptide pHLIP Variant 3 as a novel marker of acidic malignant lesions
Tapmeier TT., Moshnikova A., Beech J., Allen D., Kinchesh P., Smart S., Harris A., McIntyre A., Engelman DM., Andreev OA., Reshetnyak YK., Muschel RJ.
Significance Acidic pH may distinguish aggressive from more indolent cancers. The limitation on testing this hypothesis to date has been the difficulty of measuring acidic pH in cancers. Here we show that retention of the pH low insertion peptide (pHLIP) Variant 3 (Var3) reflects acidic pH. Using pHLIP Var3, we show its ability to detect cancer with a low false-positive rate in a genetically engineered model of murine breast cancer, paving the way for testing this probe in clinical situations.