Electrochemical Aptasensors for Early Cancer Diagnosis: A Review

Aptamers are specific oligonucleotides selected invitro which bind to target molecules with high affinity and specificity like antibody-antigen interactions. For that reason, these synthetic oligonucleotides also known as “artificial antibodies”, offer great potential as bio-recognition elements in biosensors. Electrochemical sensors, as biosensors, are very attractive to early diagnosis of cancer as these devices are fast, portable, extremely sensitive and selective towards their targets, especially when a biorecognition element is integrated with the electrode surface. This review presents electrochemical aptasensors reported in the literature which is sensitive to and specific to cancer cells or their marker proteins, and their possible improvements by combining nanotechnology.