With the continuous discovery and research of predictive cancer-related biomarkers, liquid biopsy shows great potential in cancer diagnosis. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and microfluidic technology have received much attention among the various cancer biomarker detection methods. The former has ultrahigh detection sensitivity and can provide a unique fingerprint. In contrast, the latter has the characteristics of miniaturization and integration, which can realize accurate control of the detection samples and high-throughput detection through design. Both have the potential for point-of-care testing (POCT), and their combination (lab-on-a-chip SERS (LoC-SERS)) shows good compatibility. In this paper, the basic situation of circulating proteins, circulating tumor cells, exosomes, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), and microRNA (miRNA) in the diagnosis of various cancers is reviewed, and the detection research of these biomarkers by the LoC-SERS platform in recent years is described in detail. At the same time, the challenges and future development of the platform are discussed at the end of the review. Summarizing the current technology is expected to provide a reference for scholars engaged in related work and interested in this field.
We summarized the advantages and challenges of microfluidic technology and SERS.
We described the cancer profile of biomarkers (proteins, CTCs, exosomes, ctDNA, and miRNA) in blood.
Several detection methods of cancer biomarkers, such as ELISA, PCR, NGS, and MS, are compared.
SERS substrates, such as nanosol and solid substrates combined with microfluidics, are shown.
The applications of LoC-SERS in cancer biomarker detection are exemplified and discussed.