Nanodiagnostics: A review of the medical capabilities of nanopores

Modern diagnostics strive to be accurate, fast, and inexpensive in addition to properly identifying the presence of a disease, infection, or illness. Early diagnosis is key; catching a disease in its early stages can be the difference between fatality and treatment. The challenge with many diseases is that detectability of the disease scales with disease progression. Since single molecule sensors, e.g., nanopores, can sense biomolecules at low concentrations, they have the potential to become clinically relevant in many of today's medical settings. With nanopore-based sensing, lower volumes and concentrations are required for detection, enabling it to be clinically beneficial. Other advantages to using nanopores include that they are tunable to an enormous variety of molecules and boast low costs, and fabrication is scalable for manufacturing. We discuss previous reports and the potential for incorporating nanopores into the medical field for early diagnostics, therapeutic monitoring, and identifying relapse/recurrence. Nanopores have already established themselves as a robust sequencing tool and, in time, will be utilized in diagnosing the presence of disease. Specifically, samples extracted from patients will be prepped by isolating the nucleic acid, protein, or combination of the two for disease/ailment presence via nanopores. In this review, we describe the promising future and potential challenges for incorporating nanopores into the medical field for health care professionals to quickly and accurately diagnosis and treat patients. [Display omitted]