Gold-nanoparticles Interface-based Electrochemical Immunosensors for Tumor Biomarkers

The implementation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in electrochemical immunoassays of cancer biomarkers has been in place for several years. AuNPs play crucial roles in the development of a convenient interface for the immobilization of antibodies, facilitating the electron transfer process through a developed interface and signal amplification by several orders of magnitude. Additionally, because of the unique properties of AuNPs, AuNPs-based electrochemical immunosensors offer ultrasensitive, biocompatible, rapid and inexpensive sensing approaches with the feasibility of on-line monitoring and simultaneous sensing of multiple cancer biomarkers. Herein, we summarize different synthetic strategies of AuNPs and their main roles in the design of electrochemical immunosensors. Moreover, the different applications of AuNPs in developing electrochemical immunosensors for very common tumor biomarkers such as PSA, CEA, AFP, CA125 and hCG are briefly discussed in this chapter.