Development of biosensors for detection of alpha-fetoprotein: As a major biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma

Alpha-fetoprotein as a multifunctional glycoprotein with a dual regulatory role in cancer and fetal activities is belonging to an albuminoid gene family. Due to important biological activities of alpha-fetoprotein in the adjustment of cancer, the level of this biomarker, majorly in liver carcinomas, abnormally is elevated. Also, the probability of high-risk or low-risk patients for chromosomal abnormalities can be identified by the serum level of alpha-fetoprotein. The detection of biomarkers possesses an important role in prognosis and early diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. So, the development of accurate and sensitive methods for measurement of alpha-fetoprotein is of great importance. Among the various methods which have been developed to detect biomarkers, biosensors present promising role due to advantages of high sensitivity specificity, easy operation, and instrumentation. Hence, the present review focuses on the studies in the field of designing and fabrication of optical and electrochemical biosensors for the identification and quantification of alpha-fetoprotein. This review obviously indicates that designed and introduced biosensors have been well fabricated through surface modification, nanofabrication, and bio-functionalization techniques to detect alpha-fetoprotein below the cut-off level (20 ng/mL). Despite various advantages of established biosensors, but they still suffer from some defects to develop in clinical assays. The optical biosensors possessed more complex designing in comparison with electrochemical biosensors, which limits their application for clinical goals. Also, it is highly demanded to the incorporation of sensitive and easy to structure of electrochemical biosensors with microfluidic chips to enable high-throughput sample detection, portability, point-of-care and postoperative usage in the future researches. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.