Human Saliva Collection Devices for Proteomics: An Update

Abstract

There has been a rapid growth in the interest and adaptation of saliva as a diagnostic specimen over the last decade, and in the last few years in particular, there have been major developments involving the application of saliva as a clinically relevant specimen. Saliva provides a “window” into the oral and systemic health of an individual, and like other bodily fluids, saliva can be analyzed and studied to diagnose diseases. With the advent of new, more sensitive technologies to detect smaller concentrations of analytes in saliva relative to blood levels, there have been a number of critical developments in the field that we will describe. In particular, recent advances in standardized saliva collection devices that were not available three to four years ago, have made it easy for safe, simple, and non-invasive collection of samples to be carried out from patients. With the availability of these new technologies, we believe that in the next decade salivary proteomics will make it possible to predict and diagnose oral as well as systemic diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases, among others. The aim of this article is to review recent developments and advances in the area of saliva specimen collection devices and applications that will advance the field of proteomics.

Human Saliva: Non-Invasive Fluid for Detecting Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

“…Previously, it has been reported that the SARS-CoV RNA can be detected from saliva and throat wash [11]. There are many saliva collection devices available in the market for safe and sterile collection without compromising the quality and quantity [15]. Figure 2 shows commercially available saliva sampling devices and their company names, which can be accessed by all researchers, healthcare providers, doctors, microbiologists, and virologists for the handling of samples.…”

Advancing Point-of-Care (PoC) Testing Using Human Saliva as Liquid Biopsy

“…The human saliva revolution in medical and dental sciences through its property as a "mirror of body health" in the last decade brought many disease detections through its compositional changes in disease conditions [5]. Human oral cavity consists of different sources, such as salivary glands (major and minor), gingival crevicular fluid (GCF), microbes, and oral epithelial sheds for the production of whole mouth fluid (WMF) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. This fluid is 99% water, but 1% consists of DNA, mRNA, microRNA, proteins, metabolites, and microbiota which are utilised as a diagnostic fluid for disease analysis and even for forensic analysis [13,14].…”

SCCA, TSGF, and the Long Non-Coding RNA AC007271.3 are Effective Biomarkers for Diagnosing Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

“…Blood biomarkers have played an important role in diagnosing and surveying oral cancer compared with invasive tissue biopsies [4-6]. However, despite the wealth of blood biomarkers for OSCC such as squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCA) [7] and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), little progress has been made regarding the treatment and early detection of OSCC [8].…”