Reduced Graphene Oxide-Based Field Effect Transistor Biosensors for High-Sensitivity miRNA21 Detection

Abstract

Breast cancer has been ranked the first malignant tumor in women, and with the incidence of it increasing all over the world, early screening can effectively reduce mortality and improve the cure rate. MiRNAs, as potential biomarkers, play an important role in the early diagnosis and prognosis monitoring of breast cancer. However, since miRNAs, with low concentration, are the matrix in serum or plasma, accurately detecting miRNAs without a label in serum or plasma is challenging. Herein, we proposed a biosensor combination of nanomaterial for reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and field effect transistors (FETs). The biosensor used a few layers of RGO by the chemical reduction method as a semiconductor to detect the miRNA21 in human plasma with high sensitivity (LOD: 1 fM). It can not only distinguish between perfectly matched, single-base mismatched, and completely mismatched sequences, but it can also correctly respond to clinically complex matrix samples without the process of miRNA21 extraction, amplification, and labeling. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.9253, which means that the biosensor can distinguish between the breast cancer patients and healthy controls and can assist in clinical diagnosis and provide new ideas for the development of clinical testing.

Point‐of‐Care Testing for the Detection of MicroRNAs: Towards Liquid Biopsy on a Chip

“…[78,79] Among others, those based on electrochemical and/or optical sensing platforms coupled with suitably designed microfluidics seem to be very promising to this end. Biosensing platforms relying on screen-printed electrodes, field effect transistor (FET), [80,81] surface plasmon resonance (SPR) [75,82,83] or surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) [84][85][86][87] may offer the advantage of an unprecedented high sensitivity and fast detection times. Moreover, they can also be integrated with a second "dummy" sensing platform as the reference to provide a more accurate differential measurement.…”

Review on Healthcare Biosensing Nanomaterials

“…A high-sensitivity, low-cost, and noninvasive biosensor to directly detect miRNA21 (a potential biomarker for predicting chronic lung disease in premature infants) in the plasma of breast cancer patients based on p-DNA-rGO-FET with 1fM of LOD was developed by Cai et al, 224 as shown in Figure 13a. On the other hand, Rahman et al 225 reported an ultrasensitive label-free biosensor for detecting gastric-cancer-related PIK3CA gene of ctDNA in peripheral blood, as shown in Figure 13b.…”

“…(a) rGO-based field-effect-transistor biosensors for detecting miRNA21 related to breast cancer. Reprinted with permission from ref . Copyright 2022 American Chemical Society.…”

Applications of Graphene in Five Senses, Nervous System, and Artificial Muscles

“…Second, the nucleic acid biosensors are efficient for early diagnosis of genetic diseases, e.g., miRNA21 (breast cancer), as well as mass screening of coronavirus disease 2019. − Indeed, the DNA aptamer modified graphene transistor promotes the detection of viruses in several minutes for self-test at home . Recently, CRISPR technique was integrated with transistor platform for breaking the detection limit to attomole per liter level …”