Review-Electrochemical Approaches and Advances towards the Detection of Drug Resistance

Drug resistance in bacteria and cancer is a growing problem that decreases drug treatment effectiveness and increases the severity of bacterial infections as well as cancer mortality. Due to their high sensitivity, low cost, and rapid analysis time, electrochemical methods have been increasingly employed to tackle this challenge throughout the last decade. This review covers literature on the electrochemical characterization of antibiotics and chemotherapeutic drugs, as well as advances in analyzing interactions between drug compounds and biological cells. Recent developments towards the quantitative detection of drug resistance in bacteria and cancer by electrochemistry are discussed, and the use of specialized electrochemical instrumentation, such as scanning electrochemical microscopy, is highlighted. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published on behalf of The Electrochemical Society by IOP Publishing Limited.