Review—Biosensing and Biomedical Applications of Graphene: A Review of Current Progress and Future Prospect

Abstract

Graphene has generated widely interest in biosensor study because it had a large surface area, excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, high mechanical strength and other unique physical and chemical properties. In this paper, graphene was reviewed from three aspects. Firstly, several common fabrication methods and characteristics of graphene were introduced. Secondly, applications of the nanosized graphene (NG) and nanosized graphene oxide (NGO) in biosensor and medical imaging were discussed. The NG and NGO had the characteristics of photoluminescence. Based on the fluorescence quenching nature of the graphene surface, the targeting molecules could be confirmed by detecting the fluorescent substance. In addition, the graphene oxide (GO) had a promising prospect in the field of surface-enhanced Raman imaging. In the field of electrochemistry, graphene and its derivatives could be modified on the surface to couple with ligands and antigens and were able to detect specific biomolecules, such as glucose, DNA, proteins and etc. Thirdly, this paper introduced graphene applications in medical treatment. Due to the inherent high near-infrared (NIR) absorbance, graphene materials were widely used in the treatment of in vivo cancer photothermal therapy. The combination of the graphene, anticancer drugs, and specific antigens was highly efficient for drug delivery. This paper summarized the achievements of graphene materials in the medical diagnostics, the presents challenges, and the future prospect.

Graphenic Materials for Biomedical Applications

“…The development of probes for the tracing of these changes can contribute to the explanation of intricate biological processes [9,88]. The sensing of glucose, DNA, RNA, dopamine, the cytochrome complex, intracellular redox state, and pH sensing in cell microenvironments can be among biochemical and biophysical parameters which need to be monitored [78,[88][89][90][91][92][93]. They can be used for the early diagnosis of lung cancer, breast cancers, and ovarian carcinomas, or for the determination of cystadenocarcinoma carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA).…”

“…It has been supposed that the antibacterial activities are mediated by the physicochemical interactions between GO and microbial agents. Three main mechanisms of actions were suggested, namely, nanoknives due to sharp edges, oxidative stress, and the wrapping or trapping of bacterial membranes by flexible, thin An advantage of GO is the presence of its hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties, which have allowed the development of novel sensing methods, such as electrochemical detection, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence resonance energy transfer-based biosensors, and laser desorption coupled with ionization mass spectrometry [89,91].…”

Graphene impregnated electrospun nanofiber sensing materials: a comprehensive overview on bridging laboratory set-up to industry

“…There are excellent recent reviews on the use of graphene for medicine and biology applications [66], graphene metal nanocomposites for electrochemical biosensing applications [67], graphene nanocomposites for various applications [68], graphene based biosensors for food contaminates detection [69], graphene for biosensors [70][71][72][73][74], electrochemical sensors [75][76][77][78][79] and sensors [80][81][82] for biomedical and other downstream applications [73,77,78,[83][84][85][86][87][88].…”

Nonlinear optical absorption and asymmetric charge carrier conduction in chemical vapor deposited single-layer graphene

“…Graphene's biocompatibility, large electrochemical potential window and its ability to be functionalized along with other versatile properties make it suitable for biosensing applications [25]. Studies on the interaction of biomolecules with graphene paved the way for the development of graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) based biosensors [26].…”