New trends in the development of electrochemical biosensors for the quantification of microRNAs

MUJICA, MICHAEL LÓPEZ; GALLAY, PABLO A.; PERRACHIONE, FABRIZIO; MONTEMERLO, ANTONELLA E.; TAMBORELLI, LUIS A.; VASCHETTI, VIRGINIA; REARTES, DAIANA; BOLLO, SOLEDAD; RODRÍGUEZ, MARCELA C.; DALMASSO, PABLO D.; RUBIANES, MARÍA D.; RIVAS, GUSTAVO A.

JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ANALYSIS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2020

0731-7085

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding regulatory RNAs that play an important rolein RNA silencing and post-transcriptional gene expression regulation. Since theirdysregulation has been associated with Alzheimer disease, cardiovasculardiseases and different types of cancer, among others, miRNAs can be used asbiomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis of these diseases. The methodscommonly used to quantify miRNAs are, in general, complex, costly, with limitedapplication for point-of-care devices or resource-limited facilities. Electrochemicalbiosensors, mainly those based on nanomaterials, have emerged as a promisingalternative to the conventional miRNA detection methods and have paved the wayto the development of sensitive, fast, and low-cost detection systems. This reviewis focused on the most relevant contributions performed in the field ofelectrochemical miRNAs biosensors between 2017 and the beginning of 2020. Themain contribution of this article is the critical discussion of the different amplificationstrategies and the comparative analysis between amplified and non-amplifiedmiRNA electrochemical biosensing and between the different amplificationschemes. Particular emphasis was given to the importance of the nanostructures,enzymes, labelling molecules, and special sequences of nucleic acids oranalogues on the organization of the different bioanalytical platforms, thetransduction of the hybridization event and the generation the analytical signals.