Electrochemical Biosensors for Circulating Tumor DNA Detection

Abstract

Early diagnosis and treatment have always been highly desired in the fight against cancer, and detection of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has recently been touted as highly promising for early cancer-screening. Consequently, the detection of ctDNA in liquid biopsy is gaining much attention in the field of tumor diagnosis and treatment, which has also attracted research interest from industry. However, it is difficult to achieve low-cost, real-time, and portable measurement of ctDNA in traditional gene-detection technology. Electrochemical biosensors have become a highly promising solution to ctDNA detection due to their unique advantages such as high sensitivity, high specificity, low cost, and good portability. Therefore, this review aims to discuss the latest developments in biosensors for minimally invasive, rapid, and real-time ctDNA detection. Various ctDNA sensors are reviewed with respect to their choices of receptor probes, designs of electrodes, detection strategies, preparation of samples, and figures of merit, sorted by type of electrode surface recognition elements. The development of biosensors for the Internet of Things, point-of-care testing, big data, and big health is analyzed, with a focus on their portable, real-time, and non-destructive characteristics.

Toward Personalized Nanomedicine: The Critical Evaluation of Micro and Nanodevices for Cancer Biomarker Analysis in Liquid Biopsy

“…In addition to the requirement for platform sensitivity, high throughput platforms are essential, but many electrochemical platforms are limited in this respect. [ 81 ] It is now recognized that combining electrochemical and microfluidic array‐based platforms may be a viable way to create sensitive and high‐throughput ctDNA detection platforms. [ 81 ] This combination gives rise to superior candidates for portable POC platforms.…”

“…[ 81 ] It is now recognized that combining electrochemical and microfluidic array‐based platforms may be a viable way to create sensitive and high‐throughput ctDNA detection platforms. [ 81 ] This combination gives rise to superior candidates for portable POC platforms. Although integrated microfluidics‐based approaches offer the capability of detecting ctDNA, there are not yet reports of integrated microfluidic devices for quantitating cfDNA from whole blood.…”

“…However, the use of a heating block to heat samples to 43 °C prior to nanofluidic enrichment, provides a slight encumbrance to the overall platform portability. For a more comprehensive review of electrochemical biosensors for ctDNA detection, we recommend reading the reviews by Wang and team [ 81 ] and Campuzano's group. [ 18 ]…”

Designing Intelligent Nanomaterials to Achieve Highly Sensitive Diagnoses and Multimodality Therapy of Bladder Cancer

“…This method has several advantages, including a simple operation, low cost, high sensitivity, and strong selectivity. [ 17 ] Recently, the method has been extensively applied in the field of biosensors. For example, Chaibun et al.…”

Antibody-Loaded Nanoplatforms for Colorectal Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment: An Update

“…Nonetheless, the existing methods for analyzing it (such as PCR, sequencing and microarrays) require pretreatment of ctDNA. In contrast, anti-5-methycytosinine (5-mC) antibodies can be directly immobilized on electrodes using a covalent coupling method to capture methylated ctDNA without sample pretreatment [ 77 ]. This alternative was carried out by Povedano et al in 2018, who developed two different electrochemical affinity biosensing approaches for 5-mC in DNA that do not require bisulfite or PCR testing [ 78 ].…”