Abstract
The rapid and accurate determination of specific circulating biomarkers at different molecular levels with non- or minimally invasive methods constitutes a major challenge to improve the breast cancer outcomes and life quality of patients. In this field, electrochemical biosensors have demonstrated to be promising alternatives against more complex conventional strategies to perform fast, accurate and on-site determination of circulating biomarkers at low concentrations in minimally treated body fluids. In this article, after discussing briefly the relevance and current challenges associated with the determination of breast cancer circulating biomarkers, an updated overview of the electrochemical affinity biosensing strategies emerged in the last 5 years for this purpose is provided highlighting the great potentiality of these methodologies. After critically discussing the most interesting features of the electrochemical strategies reported so far for the single or multiplexed determination of such biomarkers with demonstrated applicability in liquid biopsy analysis, existing challenges still to be addressed and future directions in this field will be pointed out.
Highlights
Breast cancer is one of the three most common invasive cancers in females and one of the leading causes of cancer mortality among women worldwide
The RNA duplexes generated by hybridization between the Janus probe and the target miRNA was selectively captured onto the surface of p19-magnetic beads (MBs) and long DNA concatamers anchored to the
Target recycling, nicking-replication reaction and DNAzyme catalysis coupling. Method based on both the DSNATR and capture probes enriched from the solution to the electrode surface using MBs
Summary
Breast cancer is one of the three most common invasive cancers in females and one of the leading causes of cancer mortality among women worldwide. Traditional breast cancer diagnostic tools include clinical and physical examinations, histopathology, imaging mammography, and ultrasound magnetic resonance imaging. Histopathology is an invasive approach to examining cancerous tissues once the disease is installed All these limitations demand urgently the development of non-invasive, simple and low risk methods suitable for point-of-care (POC) screening/diagnosis of breast cancer. Strong efforts are being developed to monitor specific bodily fluid biomarkers for early and minimally invasive detection of this type of cancer [3]. In this sense, electrochemical biosensors, combining selective biochemical recognition with the high sensitivity assumed for electrochemical detection, show attractive merits such as Sensors 2017, 17, 1993; doi:10.3390/s17091993 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors. Nanomaterials with unique features, such as noble metal and metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs), nanochains (NCs) and nanospheres, and integrated nanostructures including graphene or reduced graphene oxide (rGO), or composed of metallic NPs or oxides and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), do provide biosensors for the determination of circulating breast cancer biomarkers with high sensitivity and precision and low detection limits (LODs) [7]
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