Silver and gold nanoparticles as a colorimetric biosensor for cancer diagnostics

Cancer is said to be the second deadliest disease in the world. So far, curing the condi-tion is based on diagnosis at the early stage. The colorimetric biosensing technique gives excellent results with high accuracy and sensitivity without using advanced and costly techniques/devices. This colorimetric technique gives the results when the solu-tion changes the color from blue to red or red to blue. The silver and gold nanoparticle can be capped together with another molecule and is allowed to interact with the target analytes. Then the color changes occur and can be viewed through the naked eye. It is already known that telomerase is a widely accepted cancer biomarker. So telomerase primers on the surface of the silver and gold nanoparticle are used for this proposal. Urine will be used as the sample. The concentration of telomere in urine is 150AEU (arbitrary enzymatic units). This detection method uses oval-shaped gold and silver nanoparticles for bladder cancer. Currently, diagnosing lung and bladder cancer is done by X-ray and cystoscopy. This device can be used in point-of-care testing and in-field analysis. Recent studies show that gold nanoparticles are mainly used as a colorimetric biosensor for diagnosing cancer, so I hypothesize that using both silver and gold nano-particles will be a perfect example for developing a colorimetric biosensor for cancer diagnosis high surface to volume ratio giving higher sensitivity as ever expected.

This success of the project will lead to a new diagnostic technology to detect bladder cancer using this colorimetric biosensor. Also, using this project, urothelial carcinoma cancer will be diagnosed without the need for costly medical equipment like X-ray or cystoscopy.