Biomarkers are vital in healthcare as they provide valuable insights into disease diagnosis, prognosis, treatment response, and personalized medicine. They serve as objective indicators, enabling early detection and intervention, leading to improved patient outcomes and reduced costs. Biomarkers also guide treatment decisions by predicting disease outcomes and facilitating individualized treatment plans. They play a role in monitoring disease progression, adjusting treatments, and detecting early signs of recurrence. Furthermore, biomarkers enhance drug development and clinical trials by identifying suitable patients and accelerating the approval process. In this review paper, we described a variety of biomarkers applicable for cancer detection and diagnosis, such as imaging-based diagnosis (CT, SPECT, MRI, and PET), blood-based biomarkers (proteins, genes, mRNA, and peptides), cell imaging-based diagnosis (needle biopsy and CTC), tissue imaging-based diagnosis (IHC), and genetic-based biomarkers (RNAseq, scRNAseq, and spatial transcriptomics).

A biomarker is a physiological observable marker that acts as a stand-in and, in the best-case scenario, forecasts a clinically significant outcome. Diagnostic biomarkers are more convenient and cost-effective than directly measuring the ultimate clinical outcome. Cancer is among the most prominent global health problems and a major cause of morbidity and death globally. Therefore, cancer biomarker assays that are trustworthy, consistent, precise, and verified are desperately needed. Biomarker-based tumor detection holds a lot of promise for improving disease knowledge at the molecular scale and early detection and surveillance. In contrast to conventional approaches, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) allows for the quick and less invasive screening of a variety of circulating indicators, such as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), microRNA (miRNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), lipids, and proteins. With several advantages, the SPR technique is a particularly beneficial choice for the point-of-care identification of biomarkers. As a result, it enables the timely detection of tumor markers, which could be used to track cancer development and suppress the relapse of malignant tumors. This review emphasizes advancements in SPR biosensing technologies for cancer detection.

With the emergence of regenerative medicine, many researchers have turned to fat tissue as a source of adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs). Because freshly collected adipose tissue is not always readily available, there will be a need for improved cryopreservation methods to reproducibly maintain ASC viablility and multipotentiality in long-term storage. This study examines the efficiency of conventional dimethyl sulphoxide cryopreservation methods by measuring the maintenance of differentiation potential after one freeze cycle. Additionally, we analysed the viability of ASCs as a function of varying cell concentrations in cryopreservation media. We evaluated four distinct colony-forming unit assays (fibroblast, alkaline phosphatase, adipocyte and osteoblast) to monitor quantitatively the differentiation potential in ASCs after one freeze cycle. We found that the post-thaw viability was a function of storage concentration and that an optimal viability was observed for a concentration of 0.5 × 10⁶ cells/ml cryopreservation medium. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Developing effective techniques for the cryopreservation of human adipose-derived adult stem cells (ASCs) could increase the usefulness of these cells in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. To this end, we investigated the post-freeze/thaw viability and apoptotic behavior of Passage 1 (P1) adult stem cells (ASCs) in 11 different media: (i) the traditional media containing Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) with 80% fetal calf serum (FCS) and 10% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), (ii) DMEM with 80% human serum (HS) and 10% DMSO, (iii) DMEM with 1% methyl cellulose (MC) and 10% of either HS or FCS or DMSO, and (iv) DMEM with 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, or 10% DMSO. Approximately 1 mL (10 ⁶ cells/mL) of P1 ASCs were frozen overnight in a −80°C freezer and stored in liquid nitrogen for 2 weeks before being rapidly thawed in a 37°C water bath (1–2 min of agitation), resuspended in culture media, and seeded in separate wells of a 6-well plate for a 24-h incubation period at 37°C. After 24 h, the thawed samples were analyzed by bright-field microscopy and flow cytometry. The results suggest that the absence of DMSO (and the presence of MC) significantly increases the fraction of apoptotic and/or necrotic ASCs. However, the percentage of viable cells obtained with 2% DMSO and DMEM was comparable with that obtained in freezing media with 10% DMSO and 80% serum (HS or FCS), that is, ∼84% ± 5% and ∼84% ± 8%, respectively. Adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation behavior of the frozen thawed cells was also assessed using histochemical staining. Our results suggest that post-thaw ASC viability, adipogenic and osteogenic differentiability can be maintained even when they are frozen in the absence of serum but with a minimal concentration of 2% DMSO in DMEM.

Optimization of equine sperm cryopreservation protocols requires an understanding of the water permeability characteristics and volumetric shrinkage

The thermoresponsive behavior of a Methylcellulose (MC) polymer was systematically investigated to determine its usability in constructing MC based hydrogel systems in cell sheet engineering applications. Solution-gel analyses were made to study the effects of polymer concentration, molecular weight and dissolved salts on the gelation of three commercially available MCs using differential scanning calorimeter and rheology. For investigation of the hydrogel stability and fluid uptake capacity, swelling and degradation experiments were performed with the hydrogel system exposed to cell culture solutions at incubation temperature for several days. From these experiments, the optimal composition of MC-water-salt that was able to produce stable hydrogels at or above 32 °C, was found to be 12% to 16% of MC (Mol. wt. of 15,000) in water with 0.5× PBS (~150mOsm). This stable hydrogel system was then evaluated for a week for its efficacy to support the adhesion and growth of specific cells in culture; in our case the stromal/stem cells derived from human adipose tissue derived stem cells (ASCs). The results indicated that the addition (evenly spread) of ~200 µL of 2 mg/mL bovine collagen type -I (pH adjusted to 7.5) over the MC hydrogel surface at 37 °C is required to improve the ASC adhesion and proliferation. Upon confluence, a continuous monolayer ASC sheet was formed on the surface of the hydrogel system and an intact cell sheet with preserved cell–cell and cell–extracellular matrix was spontaneously and gradually detached when the grown cell sheet was removed from the incubator and exposed to room temperature (~30 °C) within minutes.