Development of a biossensor for prostate cancer using sarcosine as biomarker

• Author(s): Almeida, Maria ; Carneiro, Liliana ; Sales, M. Goreti
• Date: 2018
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/25677
• Origin: Repositório Científico do Instituto Politécnico do Porto
• Subject(s): Prostate cancer; Sarcosine; Biomarkers; MIP
• Document Type: Conference object
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): REPOSITÓRIO P.PORTO

Description

Prostate cancer is the most common type of tumor disease in men, making the development of new methods that allow an earlier detection extremely important. One of these methods concerns the use of biosensors to diagnose specific biomarkers for this type of cancer. Biomarkers could be amino acids, proteins or nucleic acids. In this work, the amino acid sarcosine was selected for biosensor development, making use of a molecularly-imprinted polymer (MIP) as biorecognition element. In healthy persons, sarcosine is not present or occurs in negligible concentrations in urine in heathy individuals, but individuals with prostate cancer are expected tohave higher concentrations of sarcosine. In turn, growing interest in the integration of MIP materials in biosensors has led researchers to design novel formats for electrochemical sensors. MIPs are a class of cross-linked polymers with specific recognition sites that are complimentary in shape, size and binding groups to the template.