Neurobiosensors: novel approaches towards early diagnostics of neurodegenerative disorders

Protein misfolding, aggregation, and accumulation are critically important attributes resulting in cellular malfunction, synapse loss, and brain damage, which are the hallmark of neurodegenerative disorders (NDDs). Considering numerous neurological dysfunctions have a strong inverse relationship with their incidence and progression, significant characterization of the concentration profiles of selected biomarkers with their key forms and morphologies of proteins involved in these diseases, including amyloid β and α-synuclein, phosphorylated tau, dopamine, transactive response DNA-binding protein 43, and prion protein can be an effective diagnostic assay for NDDs. The potential risks associated with NDDs are rather enormous and pose a serious threat to global public health and the country’s annual budget. Conventional diagnostic techniques mainly rely on symptoms or autopsy reports, failing to address early diagnosis and treatment, the only prospect for amelioration. Thus a streamlined and sophisticated mechanism (analytical devices) to presymptomatically analyze and differentiate between these disorders is inferred in the precise detection and quantification of concentrations of biomarkers in bodily fluids, such as cerebrospinal fluid, blood, saliva, or urine. With the aid of biosensors, the detection of metabolic, proteomic, and genomic biomarkers of NDDs is swift, sensitive, cost-effective, highly reproducible, and accurate. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the classification of NDDs biomarkers and mechanistic approaches for the designing and fabrication of novel biosensors-based detection of these biomarkers with point-of-care testing along with commercialized sensor technologies and their surplus demand with future scopes.