Advances in electrochemical and acoustic aptamer-based biosensors and immunosensors in diagnostics of leukemia

Abstract

Early diagnostics of leukemia is crucial for successful therapy of this disease. Therefore, development of rapid, sensitive, and easy-to-use methods for detection of this disease is of increased interest. Biosensor technology is challenged for this purpose. This review includes a brief description of the methods used in current clinical diagnostics of leukemia and provides recent achievements in sensor technology based on immuno- and DNA aptamer-based electrochemical and acoustic biosensors. The comparative analysis of immuno- and aptamer-based sensors shows a significant advantage of DNA aptasensors over immunosensors in the detection of cancer cells. The acoustic technique is of comparable sensitivity with those based on electrochemical methods; moreover, it is label-free and provides straightforward evaluation of the signal. Several examples of sensor development are provided and discussed.