Search

Small interfering RNA (siRNA) is essential for the process of gene silencing, especially for cancer. Despite its considerable promise, siRNA faces challenges due to stability issues of formulation and undesirable off-target side effects. In order to address these difficulties, it is essential to carefully monitor the levels of siRNA. The existing point-of-care (POC) systems cannot precisely and efficiently detect or monitor siRNA levels. In light of these challenges, this review gives the prospects of siRNA detection by proposing a novel hypothesis of existing electrical and optical-based detection of DNA/RNA with the POC platform. This hypothesis offers an interesting novel perspective to potentially fill the existing gaps, in detecting siRNA. By utilising these technologies, there is high potential to develop a proof-of-concept system that will not only overcome the existing challenges, but it will also allow effective and precise monitoring of siRNA, in real-world healthcare environments. In summary, the prospects for siRNA in the realm of POC platforms are quite encouraging, since it allows precise and effective monitoring.

Abstract The growth of liquid biopsy, i. e., the possibility of obtaining health information by analysing circulating species (nucleic acids, cells, proteins, and vesicles) in peripheric biofluids, is pushing the field of sensors and biosensors beyond the limit to provide decentralised solutions for nonspecialists. In particular, among all the circulating species that can be adopted in managing cancer evolution, both for diagnostic and prognostic applications, microRNAs have been highly studied and detected. The development of electrochemical devices is particularly relevant for liquid biopsy purposes, and the screen‐printed electrodes (SPEs) represent one of the building blocks for producing novel portable devices. In this work, we have taken miR‐2115‐3p as model target (it is related to lung cancer), and we have developed a biosensor by exploiting the use of a complementary DNA probe modified with methylene blue as redox mediator. In particular, the chosen sensing architecture was applied to serum measurements of the selected miRNA, obtaining a detection limit within the low nanomolar range; in addition, various platforms were interrogated, namely commercial and hand‐made SPEs, with the aim of providing the reader with some insights about the optimal platform to be used by considering both the cost and the analytical performance.