Optical diagnostics: Nanosensors for liquid biopsies

Disease onset, progression and response to treatment can in principle be detected or monitored by analysing tumour cells, extracellular vesicles and cell-free nucleic acids in biological fluids, such as blood and urine. Indeed, ‘liquid biopsies’ offer opportunities for non-invasive screening and diagnostic assays that are also more economical and less demanding in terms of processing time and expertise than conventional procedures. Carbon nanotubes enable the optical quantification of hybridization events of circulating nucleic acids.