aptasensors: early diagnostic of cancer

Aim and background: cancer is a threatening disease worldwide. early diagnosis can enable to use the best treatment options to fight this threat. however, biomarkers of cancer cells exist in very small amounts in the early stages of cancer, which require high-precision quantitative approaches with high sensitivity for accurate diagnosis.methods: the keywords of aptasensors in the detection of cancer, early diagnostic have been searched in pubmed and google scholar databases between 2018 and 2023.results and discussion: in this review, we focused on different detection methods of 3-mode aptasensors. each type of aptamer assay has advantages and limitations. it is easier to use the fluorescent aptasensor for simultaneous multichannel detection of different tumor cells. the colorimetric aptasensor is the most intuitive and simple for cancerous and normal samples. electrochemical aptasensor is mostly focused on the limitations of non-invasive, small, portable, and low detection for tumor markers screening. conclusion: some new methods are still in the laboratory stages, and challenges still need to be addressed or improved. there are only a limited number of aptamers with good specificity/sensitivity against specific types of cancer cells/biomarkers, and more aptamers need to be screened that can detect multiple cancer biomarkers without any complications or off-target detection in biological samples. aptasensors need further research for clinical applications with real biological sample operation. overall, it is evident that the full flowering of optical aptasensor technology for cancer diagnosis is still in the bright future.