13. Optical Biochips for Biomarkers-IgM Complexes Codetermination in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Availability of efficient and cost effective screening devices for cancer early detection is urgently needed to improve quality of life. Mass screening for early detection of cancer will reduce the ever increasing social costs associated to handling patients with diseases which are at advanced stage for failure of existing diagnostic procedures or non adequateness for broad use. One of the most important factors in the survival of cancer is detection at an early stage, and tumour biomarkers are important molecular signatures of the phenotype of a cell that aid in early cancer detection and risk assessment. Many conventional biomarkers have been found overexpressed in neoplastic tissues and some are used for diagnostic application. However, mainly due to the cancer heterogeneity, no single marker has shown to be fully satisfactory in terms of sensibility and specificity for early cancer detection. This still unmet medical need could be fulfilled by combining nanotechnologies and biotechnologies to create biochips for the simultaneous detection of several biomarkers at the same time in order to increase sensitivity and reduce costs. These devices will allow the diagnosis of cancer in an early stage and will allow the identification of many different forms of cancer possible within minutes and directly at the point-of-care, thus doing away with the conventional techniques where samples are sent to a laboratory and put through labour-intensive processes that may take several hours to achieve a result.