Recent advancement in sensitive detection of carcinoembryonic antigen using nanomaterials based immunosensors

Abstract

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a prominent cancer biomarker that allows for early diagnosis of various cancers. Present immunoassays techniques help quantify such target molecules in test samples via anti-antibody reaction. Despite their rapid usage, conventional immunoassay techniques demonstrate several limitations that can be easily overcome by employing nanomaterials in sensing assays. Thus, nanomaterial-based immunosensors have gained steady attention from the scientific community owing to their high specificity and low detection limit. Various nanomaterials like platinum, gold, silver and carbon exhibit exceptional properties have allowed promising results in the detection and diagnostics of CEA. Thus, the present review aims to explore the significance and the recent developments of nanomaterial-based biosensors for detecting CEA biomarkers with high sensitivity, selectivity, and specificity. After a brief introduction, we discussed the fundamentals of immunosensors immobilization strategies and common nanomaterials. In the next section, we highlighted the recent advances in the common immunosensors detection approaches for CEA alone and simultaneous detection of CEA with other biomarkers detection. Finally, we concluded the review by discussing the future perspectives of this promising field of biomarkers detection.