Hydrogel-based devices for cancer diagnostics: a systematic review of materials and biomarkers

A promising trend in complex cancer care is personalized therapy, a molecular profiling to tailor treatments to each patient's unique tumor attributes. Different methodologies have been used to identify cancer's mutation profile, including the use of hydrogel in liquid biopsy. This review aims to assess published works describing the performance of hydrogels as diagnostic devices for cancer biomarker detection. A systematic search was conducted following PRISMA guidelines across five databases: PubMed, Scopus, Embase, MEDLINE, and EBSCO. Studies were screened, selected, and assessed for quality. Relevant data were extracted, including the demographics of the studies, characteristics of the hydrogel, cancer, sample characteristics captured, and detection methods. From 33 studies, various types and forms of hydrogels were discussed. This review identified the most used hydrogel polymers, including acrylamide, PEG, DNA, and alginate. The most frequently observed cancer sites were breast, liver, and cervical uteri. In addition, this work reports that the most captured biomarkers were CTCs and protein markers. Hydrogels have demonstrated a promising platform for detecting cancer biomarkers in the early stages of research. Future investigations are required to optimize and validate the hydrogel application as a diagnostic device in the translational stage.