In this study, an electrochemical sensor was developed by immobilizing colon cancer and the adjacent tissues (peripheral healthy tissues on both sides of the tumor) and was used to investigate the receptor sensing kinetics of glucose, sodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, and sodium lactate. The results showed that the electrical signal triggered by the ligand-receptor interaction presented hyperbolic kinetic characteristics similar to the interaction of an enzyme with its substrate. The results indicated that the activation constant values of the colon cancer tissue and adjacent tissues differed by two orders of magnitude for glucose and sodium glutamate and around one order of magnitude for disodium inosinate. The cancer tissues did not sense sodium lactate, whereas the adjacent tissues could sense sodium lactate. Compared with normal cells, cancer cells have significantly improved nutritional sensing ability, and the improvement of cancer cells\' sensing ability mainly depends on the cascade amplification of intracellular signals. However, unlike tumor-adjacent tissues, colon cancer cells lose the ability to sense lactate. This provides key evidence for the Warburg effect of cancer cells. The methods and results in this study are expected to provide a new way for cancer research, treatment, the screening of anticancer drugs, and clinical diagnoses.

The ability of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to be used as drug nanocarriers has helped rapidly to invent novel strategies to treat diseases, such as cancer. The nanoparticles may offer a valuable tool to novel pH-sensitive drug delivery systems in the present scenario because of their undergoing mechanisms associated with the regulated dissolution, aggregation, and generation of oxygen radicals as well. These processes could be monitored by electrochemical (bio)sensors that are less money and time-consuming compared to other analytical approaches, however, with comparable analytical performance. In this paper, synthesized and microscopically characterized gallic acid-coated AgNPs (GA-AgNPs) are investigated using spectral and electrochemical methods. To investigate the Ag+ release, a 21-day ageing experiment is performed spectrophotometrically, finding that the peak maximum of GA-AgNPs spectra diminished by 24.5%. The highest Ag+ content was electrochemically determined in the supernatant solution after centrifugation (6.97 μmol·L-1), while no significant concentration of silver ions in solution after redispersion was observed (1.26 μmol·L-1). The interaction experiment indicates a stabilization of GA-AgNPs in the presence of long-chain dsDNA as well as a mutual electrostatic interaction with DNA sugar-phosphate backbone. This interaction mechanism is confirmed by FTIR analysis, showing a shift (1049 to 1061 cm-1 and 913 to 964 cm-1) specific to DNA phosphate bands. Finally, doxorubicin-loaded GA-AgNPs are monitored for the specific drug release in the physiological and more reactive weakly acidic microenvironment. Hereby, electrochemical (bio)sensing of GA-AgNPs undergoing mechanisms shows a huge potential to be used for monitoring of drug delivery systems at cancer therapy.

Poor availability of objective approaches hinders effective diagnosis and treatment for depression. Biosensors provide a promising platform for the development of quantitative and practical methods for disease detection, as well as for drug discovery. Here, we developed an electrochemical biosensor has been established with the ability to simply and accurately detect the trace glucocorticoid receptor alpha (GRα), as a key biomarker of depression, in both hippocampus and blood cells. The integration of amino-ion graphene oxide (IL-rGO) and amino acid-coated gold nanoparticles (AA-AuNPs) via green synthesis remarkably magnifies the electrochemical signals, where amino acids play multiple roles as reducing agents, stabilizers, and bridging agents. After the optimization among AA-AuNPs@IL-rGO nanocomposites based on five typical amino acids, a biosensing surface has been constructed to implement analysis in real samples as a bifunctional platform. The obtained biosensor exhibited a remarkably low limit of detection (0.283 pg mL-1) and could thus sensitively identify the GRα differences in healthy and depressive rats with and without fluoxetine. The electrochemical biosensor developed herein was not only outstandingly sensitive but also simple to use and labor-saving, making it a promising all-in-one platform for depression diagnosis and drug discovery.

To understand the correlation between animal behaviors and the underlying neuronal circuits, it is important to monitor and record neurotransmission in the brain of freely moving animals. With the development of fiber photometry, based on genetically encoded biosensors, and novel electrochemical biosensors, it is possible to measure some key neuronal transmission events specific to cell types or neurotransmitters of interest with high temporospatial resolution. This review discusses the recent advances and achievements of these two techniques in the study of neurotransmission in animal models and how they can be used to complement other techniques in the neuroscientist\'s toolbox.

Parkinson\'s disease (PD) is a long-term degenerative disorder that affects predominately dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, which mainly control movement. Alpha-synuclein (α-syn) is a major constituent of Lewy bodies that are reported to be the most important toxic species in the brain of PD patients. In this critical review, we highlight novel electrochemical biosensors that have been recently developed utilizing aptamers and antibodies in connection with various nanomaterials to study biomarkers related to PD such as α-syn. We also review several research articles that have utilized electrochemical biosensors to study the interaction of α-syn with biometals as well as small molecules such as clioquinol, (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) and baicalein. Due to the significant advances in nanomaterials in the past decade, electrochemical biosensors capable of detecting multiple biomarkers in clinically relevant samples in real-time have been achieved. This may facilitate the path towards commercialization of electrochemical biosensors for clinical applications and high-throughput screening of small molecules for structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies.

The characteristics of an electrochemical biosensor based on a Prussian-blue screen-printed electrode containing glucose oxidase incorporated into polyelectrolyte microcapsules (PMC) are considered. PMC with the embedded enzyme were formed using sodium polystyrene sulfonate and poly(allylamine hydrochloride). The characteristics were compared with those of the enzyme immobilized in chitosan gel. We assessed the dependences of biosensor signals on the composition of the buffer solution, on the glucose concentration; the operational and long-term stabilities. The enzyme immobilized in PMC proved to be more sensitive to buffer molarity at a maximum within 35 - 40 mM. The apparent Michaelis constants were 1.5 and 4.1 mM at the immobilization in, respectively, chitosan and PMC. The developed biosensors were used to assay commercial juices. The biosensors\' data on the glucose contents were shown to have a high correlation with the standard spectrophotometric assay (0.92 - 0.95%), which implies a possible application of the fabricated biosensors in foodstuff analysis.