Opening New Roadmaps in Cancer Prognosis: Interrogating miRNA-methylome and Lesser-Known Methylations by Electrochemical Biodevices

The fact that medicine is shifting towards modern precision medicine based on administeringpersonalized therapies at the right time is an undeniable reality. However, despite the continuousadvancements in diagnostic and disease knowledge, late-stage identification leads to discouragingprognoses, making the development of new methodologies for both the discovery and earlydetermination of new markers a top priority.These tempting goals can be fulfilled by exploiting the powerful features offered by electrochemicalbioplatforms, well-recognized promising analytical tools for the diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring ofdiseases, by providing innovative solutions to the more prevailing clinical barriers through thedetermination of disease-related markers at different omic layers. Among them, epigenome-basedbiomarkers are considered prospective informative entities, and the identification/analysis of the specificdisease’s epigenetic profile is increasingly relevant in clinics due to its implication in the onset andevolution of highly prevalent and deadly pathologies such as cancer. Noteworthy, despite the existenceof biosensing devices for the individual detection of epigenetic biomarkers, including miRNAs andmethylation events, their combined role and effect remain largely unexplored to date. Aware of theirrelevance in colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnosis and prognosis [1], we have pioneered the firstelectrochemical bioplatforms for the simultaneous determination of the total content of miRNA-let-7aand its m6A-methylated fraction.The excellent analytical and operational capabilities reached with the developed bioplatforms, promptedus to exploit them for determining both target markers in tRNA extracted from different CRC-derivedcancer cells and tissues of diagnosed patients, proving the groundbreaking role of miRNA-methylomein CRC diagnosis, prognosis and stratification. Moreover, ongoing efforts persist in exploring emergingand lesser-known epigenetic targets for the fine-tuning of innovative biosensing strategies to advanceour understanding and further characterization of cancer diseases.