Studies on affinity based biosensors for detection of breast cancer

Abstract

In this work, gold platinum bimetallic nanoparticles (Au-PtBNPs) on the surface of carboxylated graphene oxide (CGO)/FTO have been introduced for the sensitive detection of breast cancer biomarkers, miRNA-21 and MUC-1. The miRNA-21 based biosensor showed detection limit of 0.60 fM with good selectivity, stability and reproducibility, which proved it to be a promising platform for point-of-care diagnosis of breast cancer in clinical applications. The biosensing strategy also showed good performance for MUC-1 detection with LOD 0.79 fM and high selectivity towards MUC-1 protein. It was found that miRNA-21 based biosensor shows better sensitivity than MUC-1 for breast cancer detection with a response time of 20 min. The electrochemical detection method correlates well with the routinely used real timePCR method for miRNA-21 detection when applied for serum sample analysis. It is considered as a better diagnostic tool than real time-PCR because it provides high sensitivity, quick response, reusability, labor free experimental procedure and works well with very less amount of sample. In comparison, running a single real time-PCR assay we need to spend hours for extraction, high cost reagents, need skilled person to work as there are very high chances of contamination and denaturation of samples. Also the applicability of biosensing platform in real sample analysis could improve the diagnostic field with rapid, cost effective and minimally invasive approach. The strategy offers convenient procedures for biomedical research as it can be applied for the analysis of other cancer related biomolecules. newline