The survival rate for some cancer types like liver, pancreatic, and lung is very low (6–16%). The two main strategies to improve patient survival are: (i) early diagnosis, which identifies symptomatic patients in whom the disease is readily treatable, and (ii) and screening, which tests nominally healthy individuals to identify risk factors before symptoms appear.

Cancer biomarkers are biological molecules produced in abnormal amounts by the body in response to disease or directly by the cancer tumor itself. Biomarker levels in biofluids can be used to detect cancer at early, developmental, and advanced stages and to determine whether or not the patient is responding to therapy. 

However, the main disadvantages of these techniques are their need for a centralized testing laboratory which discourages testing in the community, high cost, long analysis time, and the need for specialized facilities and extensive expertise to interpret the results. In addition, most commercially available kits for these techniques can only detect single biomarkers, which are of limited use for accurate cancer screening and can lead to a relatively high false-negative rate in diagnosis. This DCU Research collaboration investigates tge urgent need for accurate, cost-effective, and rapid measurement technologies capable of detecting cancer biomarkers.