Designing polymer-based immunosensing platforms for cancer biomarker detection

The detection of multiple cancer biomarkers in human serum plays an important role for early cancer detection and represents a challenge to the development of biosensing devices. Mucines are glycoproteins, expressed in physiological conditions on the surface of epithelial tissues with role in lubrication. Several studies showed the implication of mucins (e.g. MUC1, MUC4) in the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer. This paper reviews the preliminary results of a few approaches performed in our laboratory for the design of immunosensors for mucines tumor markers detection using various immobilization platforms. Different strategies have been employed using magnetic nanobeads and conducting polymer/multiwall carbon nanotube composite films for the immobilization of the capturing antigen.