Development of an electrochemical biosensing platform, based on bicyclic peptides as the synthetic receptors, to detect protein cancer biomarker h-uPA

In recent years, developing devices aimed at detecting cancer biomarkers has become a critical need to face more demanding challenges in the field of healthcare. Human-urokinase plasminogen activator (h-uPA) has been recently recognised as a promising protein cancer biomarker gaining an increasing interest in the field of cancer research and sensing. In fact, novel methodologies and technologies, devised for cancer detection, are highly sought, particularly those employing synthetic receptors. In fact, the latter ones would enable providing an ease and economic way to develop a specific and sensitive recognition layer, while avoiding few of the drawbacks derived by the antibodies’ production, as for example: (i) the use of animals, whose immune system is exploited to produce antibodies; (ii) the time required for the animal immune systems to produce the desired antibodies in large amount; (iii) the extraction, separation, and purification processes. A special class of bicyclic peptides, known to inhibit h-uPA, might have a central role in the recognition of this protein biomarker and in the development of specifically devised biosensing platforms, because they can act as synthetic receptors owing to their selectivity and high binding capacity. In this Thesis we propose the synthesis and characterization of a novel bicyclic peptide, whose performances toward h-uPA detection are tested upon developing an electrochemical biosensing platform. The results are then compared with those obtained with another peptide, which has been recently described in literature.