Numerical modeling of graphene-coated fiber optic surface plasmon resonance biosensor for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic breast cancer detection

Abstract

A numerical illustration of a hybrid design and numerical analysis of graphene-coated fiber-optic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor for BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genetic breast cancer detection is provided. Two specific mutations named 916delTT in BRCA-1 gene and 6174delT in BRCA-2 gene are being selected for detection of breast cancer numerically. This sensor is based on attenuated total reflection (ATR) method to detect individual point mutations in BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes. Based on the numerically obtained results, a momentous change is present in the SPR angle (minimum 35% more) and surface resonance frequency (SRF) (minimum 36% more) for probe DNA with various concentrations of target DNA corresponding to the mutation of the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes. The variation of the SPR angle and SRF for mismatched DNA strands in BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes is quite negligible, whereas that for complementary DNA strands is considerable. This considerable change is essential for proper detection of genetic biomarkers (916delTT and 6174delT) for early breast cancer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of such an adept biosensor for detecting BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic breast cancer. Here, we used graphene as bimolecular acknowledgement element for improving sensor performance. At the end of the article, the performance in terms of sensitivity is analyzed. Therefore, the proposed biosensor opens a window toward detection of early detection of BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genetic breast cancers.