About the Authors

Elizabeth Jaworski

Contributed equally to this work with: Elizabeth Jaworski, Mohammed Saifuddin

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Mohammed Saifuddin

Contributed equally to this work with: Elizabeth Jaworski, Mohammed Saifuddin

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Gavin Sampey

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Nazly Shafagati

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Rachel Van Duyne

Affiliations National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine, George Washington University, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America

Sergey Iordanskiy

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Kylene Kehn-Hall

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Lance Liotta

Affiliation Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Emanuel Petricoin III

Affiliation Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Mary Young

Affiliation Division of Infectious Diseases, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America

Benjamin Lepene

Affiliation Ceres Nanosciences, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Fatah Kashanchi

fkashanc@gmu.edu

Affiliation National Center for Biodefense & Infectious Diseases, George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, United States of America

Competing Interests

BL is employed by Ceres Nanosciences. LL and EP hold patents on the described nanoparticle enrichment technology invented at George Mason University (NIH grant #'s 5R33CA173359, 5R21A1099851, 5R21CA137706) and Licensed by Ceres Nanosciences. Patent details are: United States 7,935,518 B2 Utility (CIP) Smart Hydrogel Particles for Biomarker Harvesting, EP 1929299 National Stage Methods of Isolating Analytes from a Sample, JP 494753 National Stage Methods of Isolating Analytes from a Sample, United States 8,382,987 B2 Utility (CIP) Method for Harvesting Nanoparticles and Sequestering Biomarkers, US 8,497,137 B2 Utility (CIP) Smart Hydrogel Particles for Biomarker Harvesting, EP 2132256 National Stage Smart Hydrogel Particles for Biomarker Harvesting. Co-authors, Lance Liotta, Emanuel Petricoin and Fatah Kashanchi are members of the Scientific Advisory board at Ceres Nanosciences. LL, EP and BL are share holders at Ceres Nanosciences. The nanoparticles used in this study were research grade and provided by Ceres Nanosciences which are not commercially available products. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all of the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MS SI KKH BL LL EP FK. Performed the experiments: EJ GS NS RVD SI. Analyzed the data: MS GS SI KKH BL FK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MY BL. Wrote the paper: MS FK.