from Part VII - Lab-on-a-chip
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2015
Introduction
Biomolecular detection is crucial from various perspectives, such as qualitycontrol of our food and water, identification of biological terroristagents, and diagnosis of diseases. Early detection of disease is importantfor effective treatment and for prognostic assessment of diseaseprogression; in addition, the trend of ageing societies leads to anincreasing requirement for biomarker diagnoses for personalized healthcaremonitoring. This results in more stress on the social healthcare system [1,2]. As a consequence, researchers have focused on developing biomoleculardetection devices and systems. Over the past decade, emerging methods toaddress the above needs have bloomed because of developments inmicro/nanotechnologies. To enhance throughputs and reduce costs,moreover, these detection devices and systems are evolving from label-basedto label-free technologies.
Traditionally, label-based molecular diagnosis techniques have been used as auseful fundamental concept for the detection of potential disease biomarkersor pathogen nucleic acids. In general, the detection signal comes from theusage of a specific tag for a target molecule. The tags can be conventionalfluorescent dyes or radioisotopes. To fulfill the requirements of differentapplications, a number of conventional label-based techniques, such aspolymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA or protein microarrays, andenzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), have been developed andimplemented. Some of them have been used to form a versatile platform formany diverse applications with promising results and represent the goldstandards of biomedical diagnosis [3–5]. However, these techniquesrequire trained staff and expensive equipment, and are time-consuming.Moreover, the detection of such low-abundance biomarkers in biologicalfluids (e.g. blood, urine, saliva) requires large quantities of the sampleand complicated sample preparation. Consequently, these label-basedtechniques encounter problems of cost-effectiveness and throughput undermodern circumstances.
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