Dear Colleagues,

Nanostructured materials represent a vibrant area of research and a techno-economic sector with full expansion in many application domains. In particular, in the field of optical biosensors, nanostructured materials have gained prominence in technological advancements due to their tunable physical characteristics in manipulating light-biological matter interaction resulting in enhanced performance with respect to their bulk counterparts. The final goal of this Special Issue is to provide novel and smart optical biosensing approaches based on nanostructured materials. The Special Issue will focus on two biological topics: cancer related biomarkers and virus detection. Cancer biomarkers are a wide range of biochemical entities, such as nucleic acids, proteins, sugars, small metabolites, and cytokinetic parameters, as well as entire tumour cells found in body fluids. They are routinely used in clinical environment for diagnosis, prognosis, and the prediction of treatment efficacy and recurrence. The importance of virus and viral proteins detection is dramatically demonstrated by our recent experiences. In particular, the health emergency related to SARS-CoV-2 put in evidence our inadequate response in terms of smart biosensing solutions for mass screening.

This Special Issue of Sensors welcomes both reviews and original research articles on the field of new nanostructured materials for optical biosensing. Topics include, but are not restricted to, plasmonic configurations, photonic crystals-based biosensors, metamaterials and metasurfaces for optical biosensing, label-free and/or fluorescence optical platforms, such as lab-on-a-chip and optical fiber sensing based on nanostructures. Smart bioreceptor immobilization procedures and their integration into nanostructured optical sensors are also of interest.

Dr. Alberto Sinibaldi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Photonic Crystals
• Metamaterials and Metasurfaces
• Plasmonics
• Nanoparticles
• Label-free/Fluorescence biosensing systems
• Lab-on-Chips
• Nanostructured Fiber Optics-based biosensors
• Smart bioreceptor conjugation
• Cancer Biomarker Detection
• Virus Detection