Point of Care Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer

Among the major challenges facing the clinical applications of point of care (PoC) devices is to enable rapid, accurate, convenient, and user-friendly diagnostic testing to shorten the turnaround time for treating a severe disease like cancer. Since the burden of cancer continues to rise, it is essential to identify promising solutions for cancer control and treatment. While the PoCs have played a critical role in curbing epidemics of infectious diseases, this success can serve as a model for transforming cancer care. The simplicity, versatility, and cost-effectiveness of PoCs warrant attention for their potential to revolutionize cancer detection, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Hence, this chapter includes understanding of cancer, biomarkers, and the development of diverse types of PoCs to detect cancer in clinical settings. This chapter includes the current landscape of tools and devices available for cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment in resource-limited settings. Additionally, it will show how cancer can be detected using some biomarkers or targets applying conventional and novel approaches in the development of POC medical biosensors.