Electronic Biosensors for Early Cancer Detection

Abstract

Nanotechnology is an emerging field that holds promise to improved disease diagnosis and better health care. It has revolutionized the medical industry and is continuing to mesmerize in other research areas as well. Even after tremendous advancements in disease detection and treatment techniques, high mortality rate due to cancer necessitates the need for new sensing platforms for early cancer detection. The focus of this dissertation is development of new sensing platforms that are highly sensitive and selective and are able to detect the tumor at an early stage i.e. cellular or molecular level. We demonstrated that breast cancer tumor cells and lung cancer tumor cells could be successfully differentiated with the micropore biosensor. This biosensor was fabricated using standard device fabrication technology. Micropore sensor differentiated tumor cells using the difference in their cell properties. Since the cell properties of tumor cells are different than the normal cells, this property was used as an inherent cell marker alleviating the need of any external cell markers that are conventionally being used for tumor detection. With micropore sensor tumor can be detected even before it gets metastasized: a primary requirement for early cancer detection. With nanopore sensor epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) was detected with high sensitivity and selectivity. Selectivity was imparted using the anti-EGFR aptamer. These devices are easy to use, require minimal processing of the sample and can potentially be used at point-of-care.