Recent advances in surface-enhanced Raman scattering for liver cancer detection

As one of the most common cancers, liver cancer has seriously endangered human life and health. The diagnosis of liver cancer is of great importance to improve the overall treatment outcome of patients. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is an attractive analytical technique for detecting liver cancer, which has the advantages of high sensitivity, low cost and high specificity. This review summarizes the advances in SERS analysis techniques for the diagnostic detection of liver cancer. In particular, extrinsic label and label-free are the two main methods, generally used for indirect or direct detection of biomolecules. First, we describe the methods and materials used for label SERS to detect tumor markers within hepatocellular carcinoma. We then describe recent advances in label-free SERS for detecting liver cancer. The conclusion section summarizes the current challenges and provides an outlook on SERS detection.