A Review: Electrochemical Biosensors for Oral Cancer
, Hubert H. Girault 2, Ligang Wang 2 and Tzu-En Lin 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review provided information on the electrochemical biosensors developed for the diagnostics of oral cancer diseases. The authors separated the information in accordance with the nature of biochemical receptor (DNA, RNA, proteins). each part consist of short descriptions of particular articles with some figures illustrating principles of signal measurement. Besides, the importance and prospects of biosensors are briefly discussed. Taking into account the topic of review and rather comprehensive presentation of latest results, the review can be recommended for publication after the following changes:
- First two parts devoted to DNA and RNA biosensors do not contain figures of merit of the examples described. The LODs and concentrations determined should be provided together with common levels of analytes determined in real patients’ samples.
- Many of the Figures provided contain too small or non-described acronyms that are sometimes not necessary for the reader - please check and reduce their number. The same refers to the exhausting number of acronyms in the text.
- The authors should pay more attention to the description of the signal generation and/or amplification schemes used.
- It is suggested to remove the references far from the subject of the review, i.e., optical sensors properties [8], ELISA description [15], application of graphene in other biosensors [36-38].
Lines 71-72: “… by modifying complementary sequences on the working electrode” - to avoid confusing, the following changes are recommended: by modifying working electrode with complementary sequences”
Line 72: screen-printed carbon and glassy carbon electrodes should be added
Line 102: One acronym (MB) cannot be used for both magnetic beads and Methylene blue.
Line 113: The reaction of TMB and H2O2 catalyzed by HRP as shown on the Figure 3A, does not involve any steps of electron transfer, how was obtained the electrochemical response?
Line 130 - there is no sense to give LOD’s for the proteins achieved by ELISE that are different from those discussed here
Line 136 “First, the secondary antibodies are attached to nanoparticles with...” - if the authors mean sandwich assay, this should be briefly explained with the role of primary and secondary Ab
Line 193: there is no need in review to mention particular buffer used
Lines 198-209: Caption to Fig.4 is very bulky and should be partially moved to the text, please avoid expressions like ‘voltage + H2O2’ (Figure legend)
Line 298 - Table title is inappropriate. I contains no information about the subject. Then, there is no sense to mention PBS (TRIS) buffers and supporting electrolyte. Instead, the current nature could be presented in more detail check subscripts of the formulae in the Table. Last line: LOD cannot be characterized by deviation.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The review manuscript « A Mini Review: Profound Insights into Electrochemical Biosensors for Oral Cancer” by Lin et al., presents examples of electrochemical sensors that enable detection of oral cancer biomarkers.
The paper misses any critical view.Only technical details of sensor realizations are provided. It should be improved before being published.
-Oral cancer biomarkers should be explain. Why their detection is tricky? Why electrochemical sensors are well adapted for oral cancer biomarkers detection?
-DNA sensors. It will useful to explain whether DNA are detected in saliva or in a biopsy samples. Only signal generation thanks to different redox probe, all these probes are used for other DNA detection.
-RNA sensor. Why RNA is used instead of DNA? What are advantages, regarding the low stability and high prices of RNA sequences compared to DNA.
-Is there any aptasensor?
-Protein sensor. What is a particularity of detecting biomarkers in saliva using an immunosensor? Saliva as a matrice should be more detailed, as it is a specific body liquid that may influence efficiency of the biosensor.
-Conclusion. Is there any commercialized electrochemical sensor? What are needed to be doen to have more commercializations?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The revised manuscript « A Mini Review: Profound Insights into Electrochemical Biosensors for Oral Cancer” by Lin et al., presents many improvements but still need some modifications because of many inaccuracies.
Title:
“Profound insights” should be modified to “Insights”
Abstract
“In particular, we emphasize on electrochemical biosensors working at the molecular levels, which can be classified into mainly three types: DNA biosensors, RNA biosensors and protein biosensors according to the types of the analytes.”
Aptasensors should be added especially because the review presents aptasensors
The classification is not according to the type of the analyte but to the type of recognition element. For instance, an aptasensor can recognize the whole cell, a toxin, or a protein
Lines 99-100
“Compared to common biosensors, aptamer-based biosensor characterized label-free, highly sensitivity and exempted from using electron mediators for electrochemical detection”
What is commun biosensor? Many aptasensors use mediators. The sentence should be modified.
Author Response
Thank the reviewer’s comments. We moved aptasensors parts to 2.3 protein sensor part because herein the example we discussed is about using aptamer to sense the protein.According to the published oral cancer review “Hasanzadeh et. al. TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry 2017, 125-137.”, they didn’t discuss aptasensor separately from other part, even if aptamers can bind DNA, RNA, and whole cell. Therefore, we will not discuss this part separately.We changed common biosensors to traditional biosensors.
