Electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biosensors for biomarker detection

A rapid and accurate medical diagnosis is essential in order to determine the health status of a patient. Nowadays, most of the clinical analyses are performed in specialized laboratory, which required specific instrumentation and trained personal, resulting in an increase of analysis costs and time. In this context, biosensors represent ideal tools capable to provide a specific and fast response together with low cost, easy use and portable size features. This work attempts to provide a review of the research progresses of electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biosensor platforms in clinical applications that have been published in recent years. Special emphasis will be devoted to discuss examples for breast cancer biomarker detection, because breast cancer, is considered the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide in women, representing 15% of all cancer related amongst women, with a 6% mortality rate (based on overall cancer deaths). The manuscript is focused on aptamer-based biosensors, because, due to their stability and their relatively low cost, they have been successfully applied in many biosensor formats for breast cancer biomarker detection.