An updated review on the development of a nanomaterial-based field-effect transistor-type biosensors to detect exosomes for cancer diagnosis

Cancer, a life-threatening genetic disease caused by abnormalities in normal cell growth regulatory functions, poses a significant challenge that current medical technologies cannot fully overcome. The current desired breakthrough is to diagnose cancer as early as possible and increase survival rates through treatments tailored to the prognosis and appropriate follow-up. From a perspective that reflects this contemporary paradigm of cancer diagnostics, exosomes are emerging as promising biomarkers. Exosomes, serving as mobile biological information repositories of cancer cells, have been known to create a microtumor environment in surrounding cells, and significant insight into the clinical significance of cancer diagnosis targeting them has been reported. Therefore, there are growing interests in constructing a system that enables continuous screening with a focus on patient- friendly and flexible diagnosis, aiming to improve cancer screening rates through exosome detection. This review focuses on a proposed exosome-embedded biological information-detecting platform employing a field-effect transistor (FET)-based biosensor that leverages portability, cost-effectiveness, and rapidity to minimize the stages of sacrifice attributable to cancer. The FET-applied biosensing technique, stemming from variations in an electric field, is considered an early detection system, offering high sensitivity and a prompt response frequency for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of biomolecules. Hence, an in-depth discussion was conducted on the understanding of various exosome-based cancer biomarkers and the clinical significance of recent studies on FETbased biosensors applying them.