Biosensors: the new wave in cancer diagnosis

Bohunicky B, Brian Bohunicky, Mousa SA, Shaker A Mousa
Nanotechnology, science and applications · 2010 · vol. 4 , pp. 1–10 · doi:10.2147/nsa.s13465 · PMID:24198482 · PMC3781701
Review OA: closed
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-09-02 ⓘ

This review summarizes current obstacles to early cancer detection and the expanding use of biosensors as diagnostic tools for identifying biomarkers, monitoring metastasis, and determining chemotherapy effectiveness.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-09-02 · read from full text ⓘ

This review article examines the potential of biosensors as a diagnostic tool for early cancer detection, aiming to overcome current limitations where malignancies are often identified only after metastasis. The authors describe how these devices convert biological entities like proteins or DNA into electrical signals to identify specific biomarkers, monitor angiogenesis, and assess chemotherapy effectiveness at target sites. While acknowledging existing obstacles to early detection, the paper highlights the technology's capacity for fast, accurate analysis and reliable imaging of cancer cells without providing clinical recommendations for patient care. The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

The earlier cancer can be detected, the better the chance of a cure. Currently, many cancers are diagnosed only after they have metastasized throughout the body. Effective, accurate methods of cancer detection and clinical diagnosis are urgently needed. Biosensors are devices that are designed to detect a specific biological analyte by essentially converting a biological entity (ie, protein, DNA, RNA) into an electrical signal that can be detected and analyzed. The use of biosensors in cancer detection and monitoring holds vast potential. Biosensors can be designed to detect emerging cancer biomarkers and to determine drug effectiveness at various target sites. Biosensor technology has the potential to provide fast and accurate detection, reliable imaging of cancer cells, and monitoring of angiogenesis and cancer metastasis, and the ability to determine the effectiveness of anticancer chemotherapy agents. This review will briefly summarize the current obstacles to early detection of cancer and the expanding use of biosensors as a diagnostic tool, as well as some future applications of biosensor technology.
Full text 2,307 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 2 sections · click to expand

Abstract

The earlier cancer can be detected, the better the chance of a cure. Currently, many cancers are diagnosed only after they have metastasized throughout the body. Effective, accurate methods of cancer detection and clinical diagnosis are urgently needed. Biosensors are devices that are designed to detect a specific biological analyte by essentially converting a biological entity (ie, protein, DNA, RNA) into an electrical signal that can be detected and analyzed. The use of biosensors in cancer detection and monitoring holds vast potential. Biosensors can be designed to detect emerging cancer biomarkers and to determine drug effectiveness at various target sites. Biosensor technology has the potential to provide fast and accurate detection, reliable imaging of cancer cells, and monitoring of angiogenesis and cancer metastasis, and the ability to determine the effectiveness of anticancer chemotherapy agents. This review will briefly summarize the current obstacles to early detection of cancer and the expanding use of biosensors as a diagnostic tool, as well as some future applications of biosensor technology.

Keywords

biosensor, oncogene, nanotechnology, biotechnology, cancer detection, diagnosis, point-of-care © 2010 The Author(s). This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, 3.0) License. By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-18T09:30:06.152893+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:12:48.765018+00:00