Cancer is a malignant disease that endangers human life, especially owing to its high fatality rate; therefore, rapid and accurate early screening is needed to effectively improve the survival rate. Compared with traditional cancer detection methods, electrochemical biosensors that recognize cancer biomarkers in blood have the advantages of low invasiveness, fast diagnosis, and low cost. However, there is always a trade-off between sensitivity and selectivity, which limits the detection of trace amounts of biomarkers produced in the early stages. To address this issue, an increasing number of nanomaterials with simultaneous improvements in both sensitivity and selectivity have recently been reported. In this review, different categories of state-of-the-art electrochemical biosensors and their operating principles are introduced, and their respective advantages and disadvantages are described. Furthermore, the review discusses the existing detection strategies and performance of nanomaterial-based cancer biosensors for biomarker recognition, providing overall guidance for the material selection of different biomarkers. Finally, the main challenges involving existing electrochemical cancer biosensors are evaluated to present the future development prospects of nanomaterials and detection strategies.
Keywords: biomarkers; cancer diagnosis; electrochemical biosensors; nanomaterials.
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