Emerging Biosensors for Oral Cancer Detection and Diagnosis—A Review Unravelling Their Role in Past and Present Advancements in the Field of Early Diagnosis

Abstract

Oral cancer is a serious concern to people all over the world because of its high mortality rate and metastatic spread to other areas of the body. Despite recent advancements in biomedical research, OC detection at an early stage remains a challenge and is complex and inaccurate with conventional diagnostics procedures. It is critical to study innovative approaches that can enable a faster, easier, non-invasive, and more precise diagnosis of OC in order to increase the survival rate of patients. In this paper, we conducted a review on how biosensors might be an excellent tool for detecting OC. This review covers the strategies that use different biosensors to target various types of biomarkers and focuses on biosensors that function at the molecular level viz. DNA biosensors, RNA biosensors, and protein biosensors. In addition, we reviewed non-invasive electrochemical methods, optical methods, and nano biosensors to analyze the OC biomarkers present in body fluids such as saliva and serum. As a result, this review sheds light on the development of ground-breaking biosensors for the early detection and diagnosis of OC.

Challenges and Advances of Hydrogel-Based Wearable Electrochemical Biosensors for Real-Time Monitoring of Biofluids: From Lab to Market. A Review

“…As a biofluid secreted by the parotid gland, saliva consists of several significant components, including drug metabolites, enzymes, microbial flora, and hormones . Saliva, due to its noninvasive collection, has found extensive application in electrochemical sensing for the detection of diverse biomarkers, including proteins, viruses, small molecules, and other analytes. , However, the development of wearable saliva-based biosensors has been limited due to certain challenges, including the presence of abundant salivary proteins, which can lead to biofouling and the relatively low concentration of analytes in saliva. , Recently, advancement in HWEBs has been more focused on addressing these issues.…”

Can Nano Yield Big Insights? Oligonucleotide-Based Biosensors in Early Diagnosis of Gastric Cancer

“…According to their signal detection, sensors can be divided into physical, chemical, thermal and biological types [29]. The pioneers of biological sensors (or biosensors) were Clark and Lyons, who, in 1962, developed the first enzyme-based glucose sensor later upgraded by Updike and Hicks [22,30]. They paved the way for devices that transform the concentration of specific and diverse biomarkers, such as proteins, DNA, RNA, antibodies or microorganisms, into an analytical signal with the help of a transducer [22,31,32], as shown in Figure 1.…”

“…The pioneers of biological sensors (or biosensors) were Clark and Lyons, who, in 1962, developed the first enzyme-based glucose sensor later upgraded by Updike and Hicks [22,30]. They paved the way for devices that transform the concentration of specific and diverse biomarkers, such as proteins, DNA, RNA, antibodies or microorganisms, into an analytical signal with the help of a transducer [22,31,32], as shown in Figure 1. The latter one converts the recognition signal events into a quantifiable format of electrical signals.…”

“…In the quest of surmounting these impediments, the preclinical sector turned to nanotechnology, a field with significant breakthroughs in the past decade, allowing the integration of diverse diagnostic modalities into a unified platform. There is evidence that sensitivity could increase 20 times more when compared to ELISA [22,23]. On one hand, in conjunction with a variety of analytical methods, it has propelled the creation of multifunctional nanocarriers-based biological sensors, which will be our focus in this paper and on the other hand there are chemical sensors, or chemosensors for short and together they have the collective goal of optimizing their performance for low-cost, portable, on-site clinical setting diagnosis [24].…”

Review Insights on Salivary Proteomics Biomarkers in Oral Cancer Detection and Diagnosis

“…At present, a comprehensive oral examination, typically performed by a dentist or other skilled health care practitioner, is the only reliable method for diagnosing OC [ 23 , 24 ]. A tiny tissue biopsy may be taken from the mouth cavity if an examination reveals an abnormal area so that a pathologist can examine it under a microscope for cancer cells.…”