Early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a leading cause of cancer mortality, is decisive for successful treatment of this type of cancer and increasing the patients' survival rate. Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is a glycoprotein that has been currently employed as a potential serological biomarker for determination of HCC and several other cancers. Achieving highly sensitive and specific detection of this biomarker is an effective strategy to inhibit developing issues caused by the cancer. Though, traditional procedures cannot meet the requirements due to the technical drawbacks. Recently, growing number of aptamer-based biosensors (aptasensors) attracted important attention as superior diagnostic tools because of their unique properties such as high stability, target versatility and remarkable affinity and selectivity. Nanomaterials, which broadly employed in the structure of these aptasensors, can considerably enhance the detection limit and sensitivity of analytes determination. Therefore, this review selectively investigated the recent progresses in several different optical and electrochemical aptasensors and nano-aptasensors designed for AFP assay.
Keywords: aptamer; aptasensing; biosensor; cancer biomarker; α-fetoprotein.