Advances in blood microsampling technology for cancer biomarker detection

Blood microsampling has demonstrated clinical utility for applications in the fields of newborn screening, therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of immunosuppressive drugs, and for viral detection. However, for cancer diagnostics, including early diagnosis, disease recurrence or TDM, use of blood microsampling technology is still in its infancy. Nonetheless, rapid innovation in microsampling device design coupled with proof of principle studies suggests high enthusiasm for the future integration of blood microsampling for clinical cancer applications. In this review we discuss the opportunities and challenges of using microsampling for biospecimen collection and analysis, including the stability of biomarkers using dried blood spots as this is crucial in applications relying on self-collected specimens. We highlight current research in the 'omics' biomarker field with respect to cancer diagnostics, covering applications of microsampling with proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, glycomics, genomics and epigenetics. Although the landscape of blood microsampling is still evolving, the potential of this technology to provide a promising solution to some of the challenges in biospecimen collection and cancer diagnostics makes it a rapidly developing and innovative research area.