Advances in Electrochemical Nano-Biosensors for Biomedical and Environmental Applications: From Current Work to Future Perspectives

Abstract

Modern life quality is strongly supported by the advances made in biosensors, which has been attributed to their crucial and viable contribution in point-of-care (POC) technology developments. POC devices are exploited for the fast tracing of disease progression, rapid analysis of water, and food quality assessment. Blood glucose meters, home pregnancy strips, and COVID-19 rapid tests all represent common examples of successful biosensors. Biosensors can provide great specificity due to the incorporation of selective bio-recognition elements and portability at significantly reduced costs. Electrochemical biosensor platforms are one of the most advantageous of these platforms because they offer many merits, such as being cheap, selective, specific, rapid, and portable. Furthermore, they can be incorporated into smartphones and various analytical approaches in order to increase their sensitivity and many other properties. As a very broad and interdisciplinary area of research and development, biosensors include all disciplines and backgrounds from materials science, chemistry, physics, medicine, microbiology/biology, and engineering. Accordingly, in this state-of-the-art article, historical background alongside the long journey of biosensing construction and development, starting from the Clark oxygen electrode until reaching highly advanced wearable stretchable biosensing devices, are discussed. Consequently, selected examples among the miscellaneous applications of nanobiosensors (such as microbial detection, cancer diagnosis, toxicity analysis, food quality-control assurance, point of care, and health prognosis) are described. Eventually, future perspectives for intelligent biosensor commercialization and exploitation in real-life that is going to be supported by machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are stated.

Recent Advancements in Nanobiosensors: Current Trends, Challenges, Applications, and Future Scope

“…Integrated circuit commercialization started in 1965 using silicon-processing technologies in the microelectronics sector. Over time, there has been an increase in the progress made in shrinking circuit size [ 190 ]. Moore Law’s 1965 prediction sped up the development of smaller integrated circuits by reducing transistor size, increasing transistor density, and improving operating frequencies.…”

Non-enzymatic disposable electrochemical sensors based on CuO/Co3O4@MWCNTs nanocomposite modified screen-printed electrode for the direct determination of urea

“…Alternatively, electrochemical biosensors provided low cost, rapid detection and high selectivity 18 , 19 . Biosensors are bendable detection techniques that have high importance, being able to resolve a potential number of problems and industrial challenges in diverse areas such as defense-related issues, explosives, food safety, environmental monitoring 20 – 22 , drugs and pharmaceutical analysis 23 , disease biomarkers 24 , 25 , homeland safety 26 , 27 .…”

“…Among the electrochemical biosensor techniques, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) biosensors is the most powerful tools used for studying the bio-recognition events such drug-target identification, protein–protein affinity binding, or the antigen–antibody interaction 18 , 31 , 32 .…”

Bacteriophage-based nano-biosensors for the fast impedimetric determination of pathogens in food samples

“…To that end, biosensors attracted the attention of the scientific community due to their high selectivity, sensitivity and accuracy for the fast determination of microbial contamination and the biological activities of pathogens 6 , 14 , 15 . Biosensors are analytical devices that use biochemical/biological reactions to detect a single or multiple targeting analytes 16 , 17 .…”

“…A typical biosensor consists of three main components, the first is the recognition element(s) (e.g. antibodies, DNA, enzymes, bacteriophages, cells, aptamers, or biomimetic (artificial) sensing materials)) which specifically reacts with a target molecule 8 , 15 .…”