High throughput evanescent-wave biosensor for the early-stage detection of biomarkers in liquid biopsies (Conference Presentation)

In recent years, liquid biopsy has become a powerful non-invasive diagnostic alternative to traditional methods involving histological or genetic analysis. Standard biopsies are invasive, risky, and often require expensive procedures. Significant efforts have focused on developing sensitive technologies to analyze body fluids for pathological biomarkers with greater sensitivity and specificity. Total internal reflection spectroscopy has been exploited as a non-destructive, selective, and highly sensitive methods to analyze phenomena within the nanometric evanescent wave (EW) region. This method reduces background noise, enabling single molecule detection. Gold nanoparticles can be further assembled on analytes in the EW region to enhance optical signals significantly. Additionally, engineering the chemistry of NPs enhances specificity for target analytes, allowing direct detection in unprocessed biological matrices. This study reports the development of advanced EW-based biosensors, their miniaturization and their application in detecting sepsis and Alzheimer's disease biomarkers for early detection in blood and saliva.