Highly Sensitive Biosensor for Neuron-Specific Enolase Detection With Bovine-Serum-Albumin Doped Graphene Field-Effect Transistor

The number of cancer patients is increasing worldwide. Early screening and diagnosis can effectively improve the cure rate of cancer. Cancer biomarkers are of great value in early cancer screening, pathological staging, clinical staging, and combined diagnosis. In this work, a heat-denatured bovine serum albumin (BSA)-doped graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) sensors were used to enhance the sensitivity for detection of the cancer biomarker neuron-specific enolase (NSE). And, then the BSA-doped GFET NSE sensors were fabricated by modifying the anti-NSE antibody to the doped graphene channel. The detection range of NSE in PBS solution was 5 pg/mL–90 ng/mL, the detection range of NSE in serum was 5 pg/mL– $1 \mu \text{g}$ /mL, and the response time of the sensor was about 2 min by measuring the current response of the sensors to the NSE sample. The dissociation constant of NSE was calculated by fitting the Hill adsorption model as $6.214\times 10^{-{11}}$ M. These results demonstrate that BSA-doped GFET-based biosensor can potentially be served as the diagnostic tool for early cancer screening application.