Abstract
The monitoring of biomarkers in body fluids provides valuable prognostic information regarding disease onset and progression. Most biosensing approaches use noninvasive screening tools and are conducted in order to improve early clinical diagnosis. However, biofouling of the sensing surface may disturb the quantification of circulating biomarkers in complex biological fluids. Thus, there is a great need for antifouling interfaces to be designed in order to reduce nonspecific adsorption and prevent inactivation of biological receptors and loss of sensitivity. To address these limitations and enable their application in clinical practice, a variety of plasmonic platforms have been recently developed for biomarker analysis in easily accessible biological fluids. This review presents an overview of the latest advances in the design of antifouling strategies for the detection of clinically relevant biomarkers on the basis of the characteristics of biological samples. The impact of nanoplasmonic biosensors as point-of-care devices has been examined for a wide range of biomarkers associated with cancer, inflammatory, infectious and neurodegenerative diseases. Clinical applications in readily obtainable biofluids such as blood, saliva, urine, tears and cerebrospinal and synovial fluids, covering almost the whole range of plasmonic applications, from surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), are also discussed.
Highlights
The application of personalized medicine in clinical practice requires the repeated assessment of noninvasive biomarkers [1]
The detection of biomarkers in biofluids is a pressing challenge that is prompting the integration of plasmonic biosensors in clinical settings
The number of plasmonic applications focused on measuring clinical biomarkers in blood, urine and saliva samples has substantially increased in the last decade, the search for a universal antifouling strategy is still ongoing
Summary
The application of personalized medicine in clinical practice requires the repeated assessment of noninvasive biomarkers [1]. The identification and quantification of biomarkers in biological samples is of utmost importance for diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic purposes [2]. Clinical validation of biomarkers is needed for predicting the risk of developing a disease, characterizing the biological response to treatment and monitoring the extent of adverse effects [3]. Acquisition of tissue samples is difficult, provides heterogeneous information and is only indicated when the disease has progressed. The quantification of circulating biomarkers provides real-time information from the early stages of numerous diseases, including cancer, stress, brain damage, mental and endocrine disorders, infections or heart disease [3,5,6,7,8]
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