Carbon nanotubes towards medicinal biochips

Journal article, 2010

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit a unique combination of biological and physical properties.(1-3) These properties make CNT-based devices, especially CNT field-effect transistors (FETs),(3,4) promising as a novel platform for chemical sensors,(5) biosensors,(6-8) and biochips.(9-11) The last ones seem to be especially promising for clinical diagnostics.(12) Namely, biochips permit the analysis of DNA, proteins, and other biological and chemical molecules in a massively parallel format.(13) They represent a multidisciplinary development unifying molecular biology, chemical and electronics engineering.(14) The emerging technologies of CNT biochips in medicine might provide further advantages relative to traditional biochip platforms including the cost and speed of medical tests.(12,15,16) Accordingly, our overview focuses on the recent advances in CNT-based biochips and tries to clarify their medicinal potential including lab-on-chips for molecular diagnostics,(17,18) drug screening,(19) and also novel strategies in molecular medicine.(20-22)