Sensors have been extensively used owing to multiple advantages, including exceptional sensing performance, user-friendly operation, fast response, high sensitivity and specificity, portability, and real-time analysis. In recent years, efforts in sensor realm have expanded promptly, and it has already presented a broad range of applications in the fields of medical, pharmaceutical and environmental applications, food safety, and homeland security. In particular, molecularly imprinted polymer based sensors have created a fascinating horizon for surface modification techniques by forming specific recognition cavities for template molecules in the polymeric matrix. This method ensures a broad range of versatility to imprint a variety of biomolecules with different size, three dimensional structure, physical and chemical features. In contrast to complex and time-consuming laboratory surface modification methods, molecular imprinting offers a rapid, sensitive, inexpensive, easy-to-use, and highly selective approaches for sensing, and especially for the applications of diagnosis, screening, and theranostics. Due to its physical and chemical robustness, high stability, low-cost, and reusability features, molecularly imprinted polymer based sensors have become very attractive modalities for such applications with a sensitivity of minute structural changes in the structure of biomolecules. This review aims at discussing the principle of molecular imprinting method, the integration of molecularly imprinted polymers with sensing tools, the recent advances and strategies in molecular imprinting methodologies, their applications in medical, and future outlook on this concept.

The accurate detection of biological substances such as proteins has always been a hot topic in scientific research. Biomimetic sensors seek to imitate sensitive and selective mechanisms of biological systems and integrate these traits into applicable sensing platforms. Molecular imprinting technology has been extensively practiced in many domains, where it can produce various molecular recognition materials with specific recognition capabilities. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), dubbed plastic antibodies, are artificial receptors with high-affinity binding sites for a particular molecule or compound. MIPs for protein recognition are expected to have high affinity via numerous interactions between polymer matrices and multiple functional groups of the target protein. This critical review briefly describes recent advances in the synthesis, characterization, and application of MIP-based sensor platforms used to detect proteins.

Microfluidic devices have led to novel biological advances through the improvement of micro systems that can mimic and measure. Microsystems easily handle sub-microliter volumes, obviously with guidance presumably through laminated fluid flows. Microfluidic systems have production methods that do not need expert engineering, away from a centralized laboratory, and can implement basic and point of care analysis, and this has attracted attention to their widespread dissemination and adaptation to specific biological issues. The general use of microfluidic tools in clinical settings can be seen in pregnancy tests and diabetic control, but recently microfluidic platforms have become a key novel technology for cancer diagnostics. Cancer is a heterogeneous group of diseases that needs a multimodal paradigm to diagnose, manage, and treat. Using advanced technologies can enable this, providing better diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients. Microfluidic tools have evolved as a promising tool in the field of cancer such as detection of a single cancer cell, liquid biopsy, drug screening modeling angiogenesis, and metastasis detection. This review summarizes the need for the low-abundant blood and serum cancer diagnosis with microfluidic tools and the progress that has been followed to develop integrated microfluidic platforms for this application in the last few years.