Current trends and challenges in bioelectrochemistry for non-invasive and early diagnosis

This short article reviews critically the latest advances, current trends, potentiality and existing challenges in electrochemical sensing of circulating biomarkers for early and minimally invasive diagnosis. The extensive literature in this field clearly demonstrates that electrochemical biosensors provide very interesting features and substantial advantages over more complex conventional strategies to perform, in a simple and rapid way, single or multiplexed determination of target biomarkers at low concentrations in minimally treated liquid biopsies, meeting also the requirements of point-of-care devices and applicability at different settings. Despite the numerous challenging issues to overcome before achieving the translation of these biosensing strategies into the clinic, the potentiality demonstrated so far for the accurate electrochemical determination of biomarkers at different molecular levels for early and non-invasive diagnosis permits to foresee they will take a privileged place together with the traditional methods in the clinical routine.