Early diagnosis and monitoring are essential for the effective treatment and survival of patients with different types of malignancy. To this end, the accurate and sensitive determination of substances in human biological fluids related to cancer diagnosis and/or prognosis, i.e., cancer biomarkers, is of ultimate importance. Advancements in the field of immunodetection and nanomaterials have enabled the application of new transduction approaches for the sensitive detection of single or multiple cancer biomarkers in biological fluids. Immunosensors based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) are examples where the special properties of nanostructured materials and immunoreagents are combined to develop analytical tools that hold promise for point-of-care applications. In this frame, the subject of this review article is to present the advancements made so far regarding the immunochemical determination of cancer biomarkers by SERS. Thus, after a short introduction about the principles of both immunoassays and SERS, an extended presentation of up-to-date works regarding both single and multi-analyte determination of cancer biomarkers is presented. Finally, future perspectives on the field of SERS immunosensors for cancer markers detection are briefly discussed.
Keywords: Raman spectroscopy; cancer markers; nanomaterials.