Label-free cytokine micro- and nano-biosensing towards personalized medicine of systemic inflammatory disorders

Systemic inflammatory disorders resulting from infection, trauma, surgery, and severe disease conditions pose serious threats to human health leading to organ dysfunction, organ failure, and mortality. The highly complex and dynamic nature of the immune system experiencing acute inflammation makes immunomodulatory therapy blocking pro-inflammatory cytokines very challenging. Successful therapy requires the ability to determine appropriate anti-cytokine drugs to be delivered at a right dose in a timely manner. Label-free micro- and nano-biosensors hold the potential to overcome the current challenges, enabling cytokine-targeted treatments to be tailored according to the immune status of an individual host with their unique cytokine biomarker detection capabilities. This review studies the recent progress in label-free cytokine biosensors, summarizes their performances and potential merits, and discusses future directions for their advancements to meet challenges towards personalized anti-cytokine drug delivery.