Fabrication of a colorimetric approach for breast cancer detection using of DNAzyme based specific aptamers

Breast cancer is a serious health concern for women. It contributes to about 23% of the cancer cases, and accounts for the second largest number of deaths among all cancers. Expensive and time consuming recognition methods currently available for recognition of breast cancer potentiates the need for improvement of novel, specific and ultrasensitive strategies. Biosensors are sensitive, specific and cost effective procedures. These also display the benefit of quick response due to direct calculation in physiological fluids (saliva, blood, serum, milk, urine etc.) in a non-invasive way. Aptamer-based biosensors for cancer cell recognition have shown advantages of rapidness, simplicity and cost-efficiency over traditional approaches. In this study, by linking DNAzyme and aptamer together, we established colorimetric biosensor for the detection of MCF7 breast cancer cells.  MUC1 and PTK7 aptamers used as specific aptamers to binding to the breast cancer cells. This manner may also evade the modification of DNA and the use of labels, which can intensely rise the cost-efficiency and simplicity of cancer cell discovery. Our results indicated that these aptamers showed good activity for breast cancer cells detection in which in the control cells no activity was observed. Results also indicated that there is a good linear relationship between the cancer cell values and colorimetric signal. Finally, the obtained results indicated a cost effective and conveniently operated approach for cancer diagnosis in future.