Emerging Analytical Strategies for the Rapid Detection of Biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease: Bridging Nanotechnology with Clinical Diagnostics: Review

Alzheimer disease (AD) has been the most common cause of dementia and a rising international health burden due to progressive neurodegeneration commonly many decades prior to clinical manifestations. Timely diagnosing and prompt intervention of AD is thus critical in ensuring that the outcomes of the patient are improved. The traditional methods of diagnosis like neuroimaging, cerebral fluid tests, and cognitive testing have played a significant role in the characterization of the disease but are constrained by their high cost, invasiveness, excessive time of processing and their lack of sensitivity at the preclinical stage. These shortcomings have prompted intense studies to come up with faster, sensitive, and minimally invasive biomarker detection systems.

Nanotechnology has become one of the game changers in the field of diagnostics in the recent past. Nanomaterials are gold nanoparticles, graphene-based structures, carbon nanotubes, metalorganic frameworks, and quantum dots, which have distinguished physicochemical properties that significantly improve the performance of the analysis. These nanostructures have the ability to be incorporated into electrochemical, optical, microfluidic, and lab-on-a-chip technologies to achieve ultra-sensitive detection of essential AD biomarkers like amyloid- 2 ( A -2), tau, phosphorylated tau (p-tau), and neurofilament light chain. Their high level of surface reactivity, signal amplification and ability to work with small sample volumes is in favour of the creation of portable and point-of-care diagnostic systems.

Although these developments have taken place, there are various constraints to effective clinical translation, such as reproducibility, large scale nanomaterial fabrication, regulatory clearance, and its incorporation into clinical workflows. However, with continued interdisciplinary studies, these gaps continue to be filled, which brings nanotechnology-based biosensors a step closer to actual use.

Altogether, convergence of nanotechnology and sophisticated analytical strategies may provide a bright way of achieving fast, easy-access, and clinically relevant AD diagnostics, which may allow earlier diseases diagnosis and better disease control.