Point-of-care biosensor systems for cancer diagnostics/prognostics

Abstract

With the growing number of fatalities resulting from the 100 or so cancer-related diseases, new enabling tools are required to provide extensive molecular profiles of patients to guide the clinician in making viable diagnosis and prognosis. Unfortunately with cancer-related diseases, there is not one molecular marker that can provide sufficient information to assist the clinician in making effective prognoses or even diagnoses. Indeed, large panels of markers must typically be evaluated that cut across several different classes (mutations in certain gene fragments--DNA; over/under-expression of gene activity as monitored by messenger RNAs; the amount of proteins present in serum or circulating tumor cells). The classical biosensor format (dipstick approach for monitoring the presence of a single element) is viewed as a valuable tool in many bioassays, but possesses numerous limitations in cancer due primarily to the single element nature of these sensing platforms. As such, if biosensors are to become valuable tools in the arsenal of the clinician to manage cancer patients, new formats are required. This review seeks to provide an overview of the current thinking on molecular profiling for diagnosis and prognosis of cancers and also, provide insight into the current state-of-the-art in the biosensor field and new strategies that must be considered to bring this important technology into the cancer field.

Label‐Free Impedance Biosensors: Opportunities and Challenges

“…Regardless of readout mechanism, multiplexed protein detection is complicated by cross-reactivities -a probe binds to multiple targets or vice versa -which severely limits the possible degree of multiplexing and is especially troublesome in real-world situations [86][87][88]. However, a panel of several biomarker measurements has far more diagnostic power than a single biomarker can provide [89]. Thus, efforts to develop multiplexed protein biosensors will surely continue, though the challenge of cross-reactivity cannot be ignored.…”

Handheld high-throughput plasmonic biosensor using computational on-chip imaging

“…Similarly, various point-of-care diagnostic devices have been developed and among them optical imaging and sensing techniques are highly advantageous as they can provide real-time, highresolution and highly sensitive quantitative information, potentially assisting rapid and accurate diagnosis. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] To date, a number of optical techniques have been proposed for point-of-care diagnostics such as in vitro optical devices, [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] including portable optical imaging systems, optical microscopes integrated to cell phones or in vivo optical devices, [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] involving confocal microscopy, microendoscopy and optical coherence tomography techniques. Among these approaches, lens-free computational on-chip imaging 64 has been an emerging technique that can eliminate the need for bulky and costly optical components while also preserving (or even enhancing in certain cases) the image resolution, field of view and sensitivity.…”

Materials for Microfluidic Immunoassays: A Review

“…These devices are very useful for patients to know their health conditions on time and for doctors to make timely diagnosis. [1] REVIEW 'killer application' of microfluidics. [7] Even though the killer application has not realized yet, we strongly believe that such killer applications will appear in the near future.…”