Engineering affibody-based biosensing platforms for cancer biomarker detection

Background and purpose: Cancer is one of the most life-threatening diseases and has the highest mortality rate worldwide. Delayed cancer diagnosis remains a major challenge in cancer treatment. Currently, conventional diagnostic methods still have several limitations, resulting in many cancer cases being detected only at advanced stages. Experimental approach: This review was conducted as a literature study of research on the development of affibody-based biosensors for cancer biomarker detection. The review discusses the characteristics of affibodies as bioreceptors, affibody synthesis methods, and their applications in electro­chemical and optical biosensors. Key results: Various studies have shown that affibody-based biosensors exhibit high sensitivity and specificity for detecting cancer biomarkers such as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, tumour necrosis factor-alpha, epidermal growth factor receptor, carcinoembryonic antigen and alpha-fetoprotein. The integration of affibodies into biosensor platforms enables low detection limits, wide linear ranges and good analytical performance in biological samples. Conclusion: Affibody-based biosensors show great potential as platforms for cancer diagnosis. The use of affibodies as bioreceptors offers several advan­tages over antibodies and aptamers, particularly ease of synthesis, high stability and strong binding affinity.