Surface plasmon resonance based immunosensor for the detection of the cancer biomarker carcinoembryonic antigen

► A highly sensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based biosensor was developed for the detection of the cancer biomarker carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). ► A detection limit of 3 ng ml−1 CEA was obtained with a dynamic detection range from 3 ng ml−1 to 400 ng ml−1 with correlation coefficients of 1.00 and 0.99 for a sandwich and rabbit anti-mouse (RAM) capture assay. ► The SPR immunosensor with the sandwich assay format showed high sensitivity and reproducibility which makes it suitable for cancer biomarker analysis.