Demonstration of a Flexible Graphene-Based Biosensor for Sensitive and Rapid Detection of Ovarian Cancer Cells

Abstract

Abstract It is significant to develop an efficient early detection and prediction method for ovarian cancer via a facile and low-cost approach. To address such issues, herein, we develop a novel circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection method to sensitively detect ovarian cancer by using a flexible graphene-based biosensor on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. The results show that the graphene-based flexible biosensor demonstrates sensitive and rapid detection for ovarian cancer cells: it delivers obvious different responses for cell culture medium and cancer solution, different cancer cells and cancer cell solution with different concentrations; it demonstrates high sensitivity for detecting several tens of ovarian cancer cells per ml; moreover, the flexible graphene biosensor is very suitable for rapid and sensitive detection of ovarian cancer cells within 5 s. This work provides a low-cost and facile graphene biosensor fabrication strategy to sensitively and rapidly detect / identify CTC ovarian cancer cells. Graphical Abstract

Keywords

• Flexible graphene-based biosensor
• Circulating tumor cell (CTC)
• Ovarian cancer