Developing nanotechnology noses to 'smell' cancer: " Home Database News Resources Nanowerk Nanotechnology Introduction Career Center Printer-friendly E-mail this article Subscribe Posted: July 2, 2007 Developing nanotechnology noses to 'smell' cancer (Nanowerk Spotlight) Biomarkers are of increasing importance in modern medicine for the purpose of early detection and diagnosis of a disease, for instance cancer. Biomarkers are mostly protein molecules that can be measured in blood, other body fluids, and tissues to assess the presence or state of a disease. For example, the presence of an antibody may indicate an infection or an antigen, such as PSA, might indicate the presence of prostate-specific cancer cells. Although protein-based approaches to early detection and diagnosis of cancer have a clear advantage over other, more invasive, methods, protein detection is a challenging problem owing to the structural diversity and complexity of the target analytes. State-of-the-art detection methods have limited application due to "