Early stage diagnosis of programmed cell death (apoptosis) using electroanalysis: Nanomaterial and methods overview

Timely monitoring of apoptosis can effectively assist early diagnosis of related diseases and continuous evaluation of the efficacy of drugs. Therefore, developing advanced methods for apoptosis evaluation has attracted more and more attention. In addition, the increased demand for understanding the early stages of apoptosis is pushing the envelope for solutions in early instance real-time monitoring of death kinetics. In this review, various types of electro-analytical methods for detection of apoptosis were discussed. The emphasis is placed in diagnosis of apoptosis based on cyto-, immune-, geno-, apta-, and peptide based biosensing strategies. In the first part of review, various electrochemical cytosensing methods for the detection of programmed cell death and their potential as a new method were discussed. In the second part of review, we discuss critical aspects of peptide based biosensors design with particular emphasis on analytical characteristics and bioanalytical aspects. Finally, most frequently applied principles in immunosensing and genosensing methods were described. More importantly, we discussed in detail different aspects such as type of materials, injection and detection techniques, labels, analytes, corresponding sample matrix, and sensitivity. Furthermore, we address the remaining challenges and opportunities to integrate electrochemical biosensing platforms into point-of-care solutions.