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Cancer is a major global health burden and poor survival rates can be attributed to lack of early diagnosis and limited access to timely and standard treatments. Significant progress has been made in recent years to establish reliable, cost-effective, and powerful cancer diagnostics. This review presents the recent advances (mostly after 2018) in cancer diagnostic technologies with a prime focus on the various types of biomarkers investigated, such as nucleic acids, proteins, enzymes, and even entire cancer cells, typically known as circulating tumor cells (CTCs). It elucidates several seminal works that utilize a multidisciplinary approach to cancer diagnostics as an alternative to traditional screening methods. Different detection techniques used for each biomarker type have been comprehensively reviewed and our goal is to provide the reader with a critical overview of the current sense and sensibility in the field of cancer biosensing. Furthermore, we discuss emerging trends in cancer biomarker detection using novel multiplexed and integrated platforms for accurate and easy readout, while also shedding light on their technical limitations and existing challenges in achieving high sensitivity and selectivity. We hope that this work will promote collaborative research among different disciplines with an ultimate goal of achieving personalized and user-friendly point-of-care technologies that enable early cancer diagnosis and significantly reduced cancer mortality.

Herein, we report the development of a novel enzymeless electrochemical biosensor for highly specific detection of creatinine utilizing zwitterion-functionalized cuprous oxide nanoparticles (Cu2O NPs). We utilized a simple yet effective alternative to traditionally used cover layers based on the surface engineering of Cu2O NPs with N-hexadecyl-N,N dimethyl-3-ammonio-1-propanesulfonate zwitterion. This surface modification generates a pseudo-proton-exchange membrane which electrostatically hinders interfering agents from reaching the electrode surface, thus resulting in highly specific creatinine detection without loss in sensitivity. To fabricate the enzymeless biosensor, single-crystalline Cu2O NPs were synthesized via a sulfonate ion-directed seed aging protocol and were simply drop-cast onto screen-printed carbon electrodes. The shape directional effect of sulfonate ions to induce truncation in the final morphologies of the synthesized Cu2O NPs is also reported for the first time. The creatinine biosensor demonstrated fast response time (<50 s), good reproducibility (RSD = 2.8%, n = 10), and high specificity against interferents like ascorbic acid, acetic acid, glucose, urea, and uric acid. A linear response to creatinine concentration from 10 to 200 μM (R 2 = 0.9876 and LOD = 5.0 μM) was observed, which covers the entire range of physiological creatinine in human serum. Moreover, robust storage stability with a negligible decrease in signal strength over an extended storage period of 6 months was achieved, thus highlighting the practical feasibility for point-of-care testing of creatinine.

Owing to their excellent sensitivity, stretchability, flexibility and conductivity, polymeric nanocomposites with conductive fillers have shown promise for a wide range of applications in bioelectronics and wearable devices. Herein, we...

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