Recent nanotechnological approaches on capturing, isolating, and identifying circulating tumor cells

Abstract

Nanotechnological approaches are the latest modality for early stage detection of cancer. The need of rapid, non-invasive, patient specific, and informative techniques in cancer diagnostics lead to the utilization of nanotechnology, microfluidics, and lab-on-a-chip platforms for liquid biopsy, and the developments through these technologies increased the knowledge also for case specific applications. In this review, nanotechnology-based methodologies that are developed in the last decade for cancer diagnostics are investigated and are discussed under four main categories for the purpose of simplification as; nanochip based, nanofilm based, magnetic nanomaterial-based methods, and combinational utilization of multiple methodologies. We suggest a combinational approach on device development with an aim of producing a compact, cost effective, rapid, sensitive, and non-invasive diagnostic device as a conclusion of literature review.