Encoding sensing functions into material interface for a rationally engineered integrated electrochemical liquid biopsy

Limited healthcare capacity highlights the needs of integrated and simple sensing systems for personalized health monitoring. However, only a limited set of sensors can be employed for point-of-care applications, emphasizing the lack of a generalizable engineering strategy for sensor construction. Here, we report a de novo rational engineering strategy for the construction of an integrated electrochemical liquid biopsy (ELB) platform capable of direct profiling cancer exosomes from blood. Using a bottom-up approach for sensor design, a series of critical sensing functions is considered and encoded into the material interface by programming the electrode material with different chemical and structure features. We present that the rationally engineered electrochemical liquid biopsy platform is able to achieve one-step sensor fabrication, target isolation, non-fouling and high-sensitivity sensing, direct signal transduction and multiplexed detection. Integrating the multiplexed sensing with principal component analysis, we demonstrate the capability of the programmed sensing system on differentiating cancerous groups from healthy controls by analyzing clinical samples from lung cancer patients.