An Aptamer-Based Capacitive Sensing Platform for Specific Detection of Lung Carcinoma Cells in the Microfluidic Chip

Improvement of methods for reliable and early diagnosis of the cellular diseases is necessary. A biological selectivity probe, such as an aptamer, is one of the candidate recognition layers that can be used to detect important biomolecules. Lung cancer is currently a typical cause of cancer-related deaths. In this work, an electrical sensing platform is built based on amine-terminated aptamer modified-gold electrodes for the specific, label-free detection of a human lung carcinoma cell line (A549). The microdevice, that includes a coplanar electrodes configuration and a simple microfluidic channel on a glass substrate, is fabricated using standard photolithography and cast molding techniques. A procedure of self-assembly onto the gold surface is proposed. Optical microscope observations and electrical impedance spectroscopy measurements confirm that the fabricated microchip can specifically and effectively identify A549 cells. In the experiments, the capacitance element that is dominant in the change of the impedance is calculated at the appropriate frequency for evaluation of the sensitivity of the biosensor. Therefore, a simple, inexpensive, biocompatible, and selective biosensor that has the potential to detect early-stage lung cancer would be developed.