Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Introduction Cancer is one of the leading life-threatening diseases all over the world with over 200 types identifed and higher than 1500 deaths occurring every day. Despite of recent technological advancements, late diagnosis and poor prognosis are leading reasons for poor survival rate of cancer patients. The conventional methods, including magnetic resonance imaging, biopsy and ultrasound are not effcient for early stage cancer detection, due to their dependence on the phenotypic properties of the tumor. 1 Cancer is a multistage disease, and a complex range of genetic and epigenetic alterations which disturb the cellular signaling are associated with its onset and progression and result in tumorigenic malignancy and transformation. 2 The biomarkers are molecules which undergo important alterations during cancer and carry high clinical signifcance. Biomarkers may be proteins, isoenzymes, nucleic acids, metabolites or hormones and are classifed as prognostic, predictive and diagnostic. 3 Diagnostic biomarkers are used for the detection of the disease, whereas the information about course of recurrence of the disease is given by prognostic biomarkers. On the other hand, the response to treatment is estimated by predictive biomarkers. 4,5 The change in the level or presence or absence of specifc biomarkers in a cell often is an indication of cancer development. Cancer-specifc detection and identifcation of these biomarkers could help in early monitoring and diagnosis of disease progression. 6 The traditional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) or Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based methods for biomarkers detection; suffer technological limitations such as consumption of expensive reagents in every assay and slow detection. 7 Also, being manual techniques, these methods are not profcient in the continuous monitoring of the patient during treatment. Besides, within the cell multiple events are associated with all cancers involving more then one molecule. Thus simultaneous detection of multiple biomarkers for correct diagnosis and prognosis is required. 8,9 Why biosensors for cancer diagnosis? Clinical cancer diagnosis is now focusing on developing analytical techniques, which are clearly capable of sensitive and parallel detection of biomarkers rendering useful point-of-care testing. For detecting cancer monoclonal antibodies, aptamers and antigens are used to bind micro Ribonucleic acids (miRNAs) corresponding single stranded Deoxyribonucleic acid (ssDNA). The recognition signal is converted to electrical signal by a device called transducer. The transducer may be optical (luminescence, fuorescence, interferometry and colorimetric), calorimetric (thermistors), electrochemical (by, Amperometry, potentiometry and conductometry/impedimetry), or based upon mass changes (acoustic waves/ piezoelectric), and are needed because they give high noise signals and radios, high performance, have great resolution, cheap instrumentation and give consistent results. 10 Electrochemical biosensors are the widely used and calorimetric are the least explored. 11 Low levels of biomarkers can be measured by them in physiological samples which can assist in the diagnosis of cancer at an early stage because of their lower minimum detection limits. Besides, the reuse of biorecognition molecules and avoidance of a time lapse between the sample preparation and analysis is also facilitated by them. Moreover, high potentiality for simultaneous detection of multiple biomarkers is shown by biosensors. 3 Detection of several biomarkers has been successfully done by different types of biosensors (Figure 1). Figure 1 Common biomarkers utilized for cancer detection. Int J Biosen Bioelectron. 2017;3(4):313‒316 313 © 2017 Patel et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially. Biosensors and biomarkers: promising tools for cancer diagnosis Volume 3 Issue 4 - 2017 Jainish Patel, Prittesh Patel Uka Tarsadia University, India Correspondence: Prittesh Patel, CG Bhakta Institute of Biotechnology, Uka Tarsadia University, Bardoli, Maliba Campus, Surat, Gujarat, India, Tel +91 9913668812, Email pritteshpatel@gmail.com Received: October 31, 2017 | Published: November 08, 2017 Abstract Due to its high death rate, cancer has been one of the most researched diseases all over the globe. A biosensor is an analytical device, used for the detection of an analyte that combines a biological component with a physicochemical detector. Nowadays, there is an increasing interest in developing cancer biosensors as they show superior analytical performance and real-time measurement. Further with recent advances in molecular biology and bioengineering, biosensors diagnosis of cancer has taken a new direction. Due to high specificity and promise of early diagnosis, biosensors are prime candidates for current and future cancer diagnosis. With ever increasing list of biomarkers associated with various types of cancer and innovation in bioengineering, the future for diagnosis of cancer seems promising. In present article we have discussed various biosensors and biomarkers as a promising tool for cancer diagnosis. Keywords: bioengineering, biosensor, biomarker, cancer, carcinoma, diagnosis, disease, detector, potentiometric, impedimetric International Journal of Biosensors & Bioelectronics Review Article Open Access