Au/TiO₂ nanobelt heterostructures for the detection of cancer cells and anticancer drug activity by potential sensing.

Cancer is a cell dysfunction disease. The detection of cancer cells is extremely important for early diagnosis and clinical treatments. At present, the pretreatment for the detection of cancer cells is costly, complicated and time-consuming. As different species of the analytes may give rise to specific voltammetric signals at distinctly different potentials, simple potential sensing has the specificity to detect different cellular species. By taking advantage of the different electrochemical characteristics of normal cells, cancer cells and biointeractions between anticancer drugs and cancer cells, we develop a specific, sensitive, direct, cost-effective and rapid method for the detection of cancer cells by electrochemical potential sensing based on Au/TiO2 nanobelt heterostructure electrodes that will be of significance in early cancer diagnosis, in vitro screening of anticancer drugs  and molecular biology research.