Advancing metallic nanozymes for multiplexed multimodal biosensing in early disease diagnostics

Abstract

There is an ever-expanding demand for inexpensive, rapid, and reliable diagnostic sensors that simultaneously and accurately detect various biomarkers of clinical significance in human biofluids. The emergence of powerful metallic nanozymes marks the epitome of next-generation biomarker detection. Over the past seven years, researchers have fully leveraged the distinctive electrocatalytic features and versatility of metallic nanozymes within multimodal and multiplexed detection systems. Multiplexed detection using a biosensor is essential for diagnosing diseases using numerous biomarkers from a small amount of biofluids. Multimodal readouts that combine various methods offer enhanced accuracy, sensitivity, cross-validation, and real-time analysis of the targeted biomarkers. All of these components in a biosensor enable compact miniaturisation, a microfluidic platform, and the integration of sensors with wearable technologies, which will further substantiate point-of-care diagnostics. This review explores numerous designs of metallic nanozymes, probes, and signal amplification strategies applied in recent years for the ultra-selective and sensitive detection of multiple target biomarkers. Overall, these innovations are collectively paving a route in the field towards a non-invasive, robust, and efficient diagnostic platform tailored for personalised medicine and early disease detection.